Best Friend
by ivywatcher
Summary: A collection of short and not so short stories from throughout the series showing the Jack and Daniel friendship. All episode tags, these can be read in any order. Look for upcoming installments!
1. Point of View

**Best Friend**

"**Point of View"**

There was an instinct imbedded deep within Daniel Jackson that inevitably surfaced to warn him when he was faced with a person who harbored intense dislike for him. He was never completely sure how this little voice inside him could sense the hearts of others so easily, but it had never failed him before. The thought would surface in his mind as gently as possible, so he had time to adjust to the idea. Then he would start to notice little things: hostile body language, accusing stares, changing tones of voice. Finally, if the person was particularly unhappy with him, a small twinge would start in his stomach and eventually work its way up to his head.

Looking at Major Charles Kawalsky from across the briefing room table, Daniel had the start of a full-blown headache. He had no idea why the Major seemed so intent on disliking him. As far as he knew, the anthropologist had done nothing at all to make this visitor from an alternate reality loath him on sight. Yet all the signs were there: hostile glances when he thought Daniel wasn't looking, avoiding eye contact whenever the doctor addressed him, and even one or two snarky comments pertaining to Daniel's usefulness in the discussion at all.

When the briefing was adjourned and Colonel Jack O'Neill made a break from the room to beat Sam and…(were they calling her Samantha now? _Doctor_ Carter maybe?) to the lab, Daniel hurried after him. "Jack!" he called after the gray-haired colonel.

O'Neill stopped in the middle of the hallway and pivoted on the spot to look at him. "Daniel?"

His teammate jogged a little to catch up with him. Jack waited until Daniel had come abreast before starting towards the lab again at a slightly more leisurely pace. The archeologist took a deep breath before saying, "Did I do something to Kawalsky?"

Jack gave him an odd look and swiped his card to access the elevator. The doors opened and the two men stepped inside. "Come again?"

Now that he'd mentioned it, Daniel felt like an idiot bringing it up. But from the look on Jack's face his friend probably wouldn't just let it drop, so he continued anyway. "It's just during the meeting back there it seemed like he was…well, not really my biggest fan."

"Yeah, I noticed that," O'Neill replied with yet another comment that proved he wasn't as oblivious as everyone thought he was. "I figured he was just…you know."

Daniel gave him a suspicious look. "No, I don't."

Jack sighed. "I just figured you were being..." he made a few vague hand gestures, "_you._"

O'Neill was a bit surprised that Daniel looked genuinely hurt by this. "What do you mean, _me_?"

"Nothing," the older man backpedaled as they stepped out of the elevator. But Daniel continued to glare at the back of his head, refusing to move from his place outside the elevator doors. The colonel sighed in defeat and faced him, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "You take a little getting used to, that's all." Daniel's expression didn't change. "Look Daniel, Kawalsky's a good guy." His face scrunched a little. "Was. Is. Whatever. Give him a chance, and I'm sure he'll give you one." His brown eyes softened a little. "Our Kawalsky, the one that we served with—you guys got along fine."

Daniel nodded his reluctant acceptance and started moving again. "I know. I just wish I knew what I did wrong. I mean I'd say it's a trans-dimensional grudge, but the me in his reality probably died on an archeological dig or something."

Jack gave a noncommittal shrug as they reached the door to the lab. "If you really wanna know, just _ask_ him." With a pat to his friend's shoulder, the colonel entered the lab. Daniel was left in the hallway, looking thoughtfully after his team leader.

Daniel tended to avoid confrontation, but Kawalsky was supposed to show him how to work the Quantum Mirror, and they wouldn't get anything done if the Major was shooting him dirty looks the entire time. Squaring his shoulders resolutely, Daniel walked down the hall and turned to go into the last door on the left. Sure enough, the Quantum Mirror was resting against the opposite wall and Kawalsky was waiting for him, looking non too pleased to be there.

Daniel stepped inside and gave the Major a small smile and a nod. "Major Kawalsky."

"Doctor Jackson," the other man replied with the air of someone addressing a pet dog.

The pride that had slowly been rebuilt inside Daniel over the past three years of being at the SGC stepped up to the plate, and the doctor faced the man before him head on. "Alright. What did I do?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," came the prompt reply.

"Yes you do," Daniel responded thoughtfully. He crossed his arms over his chest and refused to break eye contact. "You've been treating me like a second-class citizen ever since you got here, and I'd like to know why. Especially since you don't even have a Daniel Jackson in your reality to blame it on."

Kawalsky held the gaze defiantly for a long moment before his dark eyes flicked guiltily away. "Look, I'm sorry. It's just you're not on my team, back home, ya know? I'm still getting used to treating you like you are."

Daniel cocked his head thoughtfully, clear blue eyes analyzing the man before him for a moment longer. "That's not all it is."

The other man glared at him. "Look, I've told you why, ok? Drop it."

The look he gave the young man caused something from the meeting earlier to come to Daniel's mind. The way Kawalsky had looked at him after he had called Jack his _best friend_... "You're _jealous_!" Daniel cried incredulously.

"Ok, now you're just grasping at straws," the major replied disdainfully.

"No I'm not," Daniel contradicted with a shake of his head. "You're upset because in this reality, you're not Jack's best friend."

"Only because I'm dead," he shot back.

"Maybe," Jackson admitted. That stopped the major mid-retort. Daniel took a deep breath and nodded a little. "Maybe you're right. But the fact is, the Kawalsky here _is_ dead. But he was a good guy, and while he was here we got along. I was honored to know him." He took a step closer to the man who looked so much like the friend he'd had two years ago. "But he's gone. That's the way it is in this reality, and whether that's the reason Jack and I are friends or not, it's not going to change the fact that we are."

Kawalsky gave him an appraising look. "You didn't say best friends," he noted.

Daniel considered this for a moment. "I don't know if we are," he said finally. At the major's surprised look he offered a one-shouldered shrug. "We've never really talk about it. I mean, I know he's _my _best friend, but…"

Charles nodded in sudden understanding. "He's never said it."

Daniel gave another one-shouldered shrug. Kawalsky looked at him thoughtfully. "He never said it to me either."

"Really?" Jackson found this hard to believe.

"Really," the other man confirmed. "Jack has issues with relationships, in case you didn't notice."

"Oh, I noticed."

"Then you know that he'd probably have issues calling _anyone_ his best friend under pain of death. It's just the way things are with him."

Daniel nodded thoughtfully and Kawalsky almost didn't say the rest of what he was thinking, but for some reason he felt like he owed it to this man who had been there for Jack when he…the other him…couldn't. "You are though."

"I'm what?"

"His best friend," the dark-haired man replied with a little sigh. "That's why I was being an idiot at the briefing. I was noticing all the little things that he…the Jack I knew used to do with me. The way he looks at you first when someone asks a question, the eye rolls you give each other. A guy can tell."

Daniel watched him for a moment longer before a smile split his face. "Thank you, Kawalsky."

"Charlie," the major amended with a matching grin. He stuck out his hand to shake.

"Daniel," the doctor replied as he shook the preferred hand.

After a moment Kawalsky cleared his throat and stepped back, picking up an odd-looking square chunk of technology from a corner. "Ready to learn how to work this thing?"

"As ready as I'll ever be." With another shared grin, the two men turned to the mirror.

Kawalsky took a deep breath and started in. "Okay, the way Dr. C explained it, the controller is not what you'd call an exacting science…."

Jack O'Neill watched the two men thoughtfully from the shadows just outside the open door. With a small crease in his brow he observed Daniel as Kawalsky walked him through the process of using the remote. Jack had always considered it an understood principal that Daniel was his best friend. It was a little bit disconcerting that the other man hadn't realized it before someone else told him up front. Something might just have to be done about that, Jack decided. The colonel put his hands back in his pockets and entered the room like he hadn't been standing there for the last five minutes. "Daniel? You understand this thing?"

"I think so," his teammate responded.

"Good," Jack replied with approval. He opened his mouth to start in on what was probably going to be a pitiful attempt to stumble through a sentimental conversation when Carter and…the other Carter… ran into the room. With a mental sigh, he filed away his little revelation to deal with later.

Jack's opportunity to talk to Daniel didn't come until the two men were in the locker room suiting up for the impending mission through the mirror. Kawalsky had already come and gone and Teal'c was off getting his costume on. The colonel sat on the bench in the middle of the room and pulled his boots on. With a self-conscious clearing of the throat, he started in. "I checked in on you and Kawalsky earlier."

"Yeah, I uh, I noticed that. With you walking into the room and all." Daniel gave him an odd look and slipped his jacket on before joining Jack on the bench with his own boots.

"Not that," Jack said reproachfully. "I kinda…listened in before then. Just to make sure you guys were getting along."

"Oh," Daniel replied without further comment. He laced up his left boot.

"…He was right, you know."

Daniel stopped at this and looked up in surprise. "He was?"

"Yeah," O'Neill replied. "I just kinda figured you already knew."

The smile that split his teammate's face was enough to make Jack feel slightly guilty. "I do now," the younger man said.

Jack yanked his other boot on. "Just don't go spreading it around, alright? I've got a reputation to keep up."

"Your secret's safe with me," Daniel assured. They stood in unison and looked at each other a moment. Jack shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

"We don't have to hug or anything, do we?"

"No, no I'm good."

"Good." Jack patted him on the back as they headed towards the door. "Pizza at my place if we get back?"

Daniel looked at him incredulously. "_If_?"

"When!" Jack amended hastily. "I meant when!"

"Great, Jack. Your confidence is overwhelming."

They stepped neatly aside as Major Samantha Carter made her way through the door.

O'Neill gave her a nod. "Carter."

Daniel gave her a bright smile. "Sam!"

Then they were past her and striding in unison down the hallway, bantering like they had never been interrupted. Sam shook her head and entered the locker room to gear up. It really wasn't fair how lucky the two of them were, she reflected. How many guys got to be on a team with their best friend?

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**Author's Note: Thanks muchly for taking the time to read this. I just watched Point of View for the second or third time and I struck that Kawalsky and Daniel never really had this talk on the show. Like any fanfic writer, I figured I'd just do it here. I'll most likely continue this at a later time with other points in the series where Jack and Daniel's friendship was strengthened (or should have been and wasn't.) I hope you enjoyed it! As always, reviews are welcome and appreciated, though not required. If you have specific instances where you would have liked to see a Jack/Daniel moment, let me know and I'll add it to the upcoming installments. Cheers!**


	2. The Other Side

"**The Other Side"**

Jack O'Neill sat in the cab of his truck staring up at the apartment complex before him. The engine was still idling, and the colonel looked at the two boxes of pizza steaming in the seat next to him. A case of imported beer, still cold, was on the floor. Jack hated imported beer; it was a peace offering, and Daniel would know it.

Daniel. He'd been right about the Urandans, just like he was right about pretty much everything. Jack liked to think that he was man enough to admit when he was wrong. But even after his apology on the planet, the colonel knew that his comments to the archaeologist still stung. _Daniel? Shut up._ His friend hadn't said five words to any of them after they'd gotten home. O'Neill couldn't really blame him. Which was why the fearless leader of SG-1 was still sitting in his idling truck outside of Daniel's apartment: for the first time in a long time, Jack wasn't sure if he'd be welcome.

His hand got halfway to the key still in the ignition. He was more than a little tempted to get the heck away from here and leave Daniel to his well-deserved righteous indignation.

_Coward_. Jack cursed the little voice in his head that sounded disturbingly like his insubordinate archaeologist. His hand dropped to his knee, tapping a nonsense rhythm against the denim of his jeans. If he backed out now, he'd be calling himself ten kinds of idiot for a month. Besides, he'd spent too much on this beer to let it go to waste.

With more confidence than he felt, Jack yanked the keys from the ignition and gathered up his food.

While Daniel didn't slam the door in Jack's face, he didn't look overly thrilled to see the older man standing in his hallway either. He kept the door halfway open and leaned against the frame, arms crossed over his chest. Jack noted uneasily that it didn't look like his friend had any intention of actually letting anyone inside. "Jack."

"Hi!" Jack greeted. "I, uh…" he gestured to the beer he'd set down with the arm not balancing the pizza boxes. "…Brought stuff." He tried not to wince at how lame that sounded, even to him.

Daniel shoved himself off the doorframe and walked inside, leaving Jack to wrestle his way in and kick the door shut behind him without dropping his edibles. He lowered the pizza to the table and went to put the beer in the fridge. Daniel stayed in the living room, watching without comment. "I brought your favorite," Jack explained with a little too much enthusiasm. He handed Daniel a beer to prove it. "And the pizza's sausage with extra cheese." He raised his eyebrows hopefully.

"I know what you're doing," Daniel informed him. He took the beer anyway.

_Score one for the colonel. _Jack smothered the grin threatening to break out. "Is it working?"

Daniel's blue eyes flickered from Jack to the pizza to the hard-to-find beer in his hand. "Maybe," he admitted.

"Good!" His friend opened a pizza box and put two slices on a paper plate he'd scrounged from the kitchen. He handed it triumphantly to Daniel before getting a few slices of his own. "'Cause I gotta tell ya, your good graces don't come cheap." That almost earned him a smile

The two men settled at the table, forgoing their normal places on Daniel's couch for the sake of the carpet. When this place said extra cheese, they _meant_ extra cheese. After a few bites though, Jack sighed and put his nearly demolished slice down. "Look…" he started in.

"It's fine," Daniel cut him off.

"No, it's not." The younger man looked up in surprise at the sincerity in the colonel's voice. Jack sighed. "I was an idiot. I should've listened."

Daniel just took another pull of beer. He swallowed thoughtfully, bright eyes distant behind his glasses. "I'm sorry I didn't find a better way to convince you."

Jack nodded his acceptance of this and the two men returned to their food. For a few minutes the only sounds to invade the room were chewing and the clink of bottles meeting the wood of the tabletop. Finally the archaeologist cocked his head and leaned back in his chair, fingers tapping idly on the side of his empty bottle. "Why is it that I can never stay mad at you?"

O'Neill ran a hand through his silver hair and shoved his plate away. "Got me, Daniel. Most other people don't seem to have a problem with it." Sara came to mind right off the bat. Carter, too. Teal'c on occasion.

Finally a smile crossed the younger man's face. "Yeah…" he caught Jack's eye. "I guess it's a good thing that I'm not 'other people'."

"Good thing," the older man replied. He suppressed a sigh of relief.

A mischievous twinkle sparked in Daniel's eyes. "Yeah," he continued. "Because if I were, it would have taken at least another case of beer to get you in the door."

"Well, let's count our blessing then." Jack got them both another beer. This imported stuff wasn't so bad, once you got used to it. He handed Daniel a bottle and raised his own in a toast. "To you," the colonel proposed with the not-quite-grin that told Daniel he was about as serious as he was going to get. "May you never be like most people."

Brown eyes met blue in a moment of understanding before Daniel raised his bottle and tapped it to Jack's. "I'll drink to that."

They did.

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**Author's Note: Just because it had to be done, and I got a little tired of all the emotional tags I've seen to this episode. Though most of them were excellent, I liked the more classic Jack and Daniel approach to this one. Hope you enjoyed it!**


	3. Evolutions II

**"****Evolutions II"**

The helicopter's blades cut through the humid air with a dull "thwop thwop" sound that was reminiscent of a muffled heartbeat. Thick jungle was gradually giving way to scattered villages and tended fields as the landscape scrolled past beneath the unmarked olive-green chopper and mesmerized its three passengers.

Jack O'Neill shifted uncomfortably in his seat, feeling cramped in the confined space of the aircraft's small passenger area. The seats had been meant to hold up to four people, but when two of the passengers were injured and one of them took up two seats because of an injured leg, there wasn't much room for personal space. His brown gaze shifted to the man sitting beside him. Daniel Jackson was sound asleep, doped up on pain meds from Jack's medical pack that he'd refused to take until they'd gotten to the chopper. His bandaged leg was resting on the seat across from him and the archaeologist's head was against the window, pillowed by a folded-up jacket. Besides his leg, Jack hadn't seen any serious physical damage on Daniel's person…though to be fair, he hadn't had much time to look. He was certain his friend hadn't suffered anything that wouldn't heal in a week. It was the potential emotional trauma of being held hostage by a gun-waving lunatic on Ancient steroids that worried Jack the most.

Dr. Bill Lee, the other recovered hostage, was in better physical shape than his sleeping companion. He stared absently out the window, sitting directly across form O'Neill so Daniel's leg would have a place to rest. He seemed to sense Jack's gaze and brought his tired eyes to meet those of his rescuer. The two men shared a weak smile before Lee's gaze strayed to the open sky again. He would have emotional crap to deal with too, Jack reflected. The entire situation sucked. Not only had they been held hostage at gunpoint (and who knew what else) for three days, but the repercussions would be with them for a long time to come.

Daniel muttered a little in his sleep and the sound broke Jack out of his morose reverie. He looked over at the younger man as Daniel moved to get comfortable in his drug-induced slumber and his sunburned face flinched at the echoes of pain still throbbing through his leg. Jack knew for a fact that his friend had been injured worse than this before. Yet these injuries seemed so much more gruesome… because they were wounds that Daniel had been forced to endure alone. His eyelids cracked open and Jack was torn between relief and amusement as his friend's groggy blue eyes squinted against invading sunlight. "J'ck?"

"Yeah, Daniel. I'm here."

"W's h'pn'g?" The words were slurred and only semi-coherent.

Jack had no problem understanding. "We're in a helicopter. We're nearly to the place we're gonna land in Mexico." He resisted the paternal urge to reach over and brush the younger man's hair out of his eyes. "We'll get you two patched up, and then the Air Force splurged on a private jet to get us home."

"Good," Daniel mumbled even as his eyes slid shut and he lost consciousness again. Jack shook his head affectionately and turned to Bill, only to find him asleep as well, head propped against his window and mouth slightly open. They needed the rest, O'Neill decided as his own eyelids began to droop. Rest and a whole lot more…

With one last sigh, Jack drifted off to sleep.

The colonel jerked awake as the chopper jolted to a landing. He took a moment to re-orient himself, taking in the two-story whitewashed building that served as the hospital. Dirt from the bare yard kicked up with the back draft from the helicopter. As the blades stopped slicing through the humid air, Daniel stirred restlessly. Without the steady beat of the helicopter's blades his sleeping rhythm had been disturbed. The pilot, a Hispanic man in his mid-thirties wearing an Air Force field uniform turned in his seat and removed his ear protectors. "We're here, sir."

Jack leaned forward and nudged Lee on the shoulder. "Bill! Wakey time." The doctor awoke with a groan and stumbled none-too-gracefully out of the chopper as the pilot opened the door from the outside and helped the tired scientist down to ground level. The two of them started towards the hospital as Jack turned to Daniel. With extreme reluctance, the colonel reached out to gently shake his arm. "Daniel?" His friend groaned and tried to burrow deeper into the corner of the seat. "Daniel, come on. We're here. Lets' get ya into a real bed."

His teammate's eyes flickered open. "Jack?" His words were a little more coherent now.

"Yeah, buddy. I'm here. There was this big rescue thing, remember?"

"Thought it was a d-d-dream," Daniel admitted around a gigantic yawn.

"Nope," O'Neill grinned. "You owe me for saving your bad-situation-finding butt. _Again_." He helped Daniel sit up and scoot over to the open door. "C'mon, let's get you outta this thing."

It took a while to maneuver Daniel out of the helicopter without agitating his injured leg, and when he was finally standing on solid ground he swayed dangerously, unable keep his balance without his makeshift crutch. Jack slipped an arm around his waist and helped him hobble towards the building. Daniel was having problems staying awake and his rescuer had to stop near the door to compensate for his friend's dead weight. The helicopter pilot hurried out and put his arm under Daniel's other shoulder. Between them they managed to wrestle the archaeologist's limp form into the front room of the hospital.

A nurse was waiting just inside the entrance with a stretcher that looked a little too short for Daniel. Jack and the pilot laid Daniel down on the rolling bed and suddenly the anthropologist was surrounded by a crowd of doctors and nurses that shouted a flurry of commands in a mix of Spanish and medical terms that Jack found totally impossible to understand. Not to say that he wasn't used to feeling like everything was going over his head; the colonel was just uneasy without Carter or Daniel here to explain it to him.

Amidst the hubbub, O'Neill turned to the pilot. "Name and rank?"

The Hispanic man snapped to attention. "Captain Armando Smith, sir."

"Smith," Jack repeated dubiously.

"Yes sir," the man confirmed.

"Special ops?"

"Possibly, sir. I am not at liberty to divulge my current assignment."

"Ah." Jack had been on enough of those assignments to appreciate the uses of the last name Smith. "At ease." As the man relaxed, Jack stuck out his hand to shake. "Thanks for the assist, Captain."

Armando's grip was strong. "Any time, sir." The two men turned to watch the medical fuss over Daniel.

It took O'Neill a moment to realize what was missing. "Where's Lee?"

"Restroom," Smith replied. "Then to his room. They said his is right next to Dr. Jackson's."

A doctor broke off from the group and approached the Air Force officers. "Colonel O'Neill?"

The silver-haired man stepped forward. "That's me."

The doctor was around Jack's age, standing about five-seven with a balding head and tiny glasses that perched on the end of his nose. "Let's walk. We're moving Dr. Jackson into a private room." The two men started down the cramped hallway following the two nurses rolling the stretcher that now supported an unconscious Daniel.

Jack kept his eyes on his friend's still form. "What's the prognosis, doc?"

The shorter man sighed heavily. "As far as I can tell without tests, all he and Dr. Lee are seriously suffering from is severe dehydration and some malnutrition, but…" He hesitated, and Jack instinctively knew that wasn't all.

"C'mon, doc. Don't sugarcoat it."

The doctor shook his head darkly as they arrived at Daniel's room. "Both of them have the residual marks of electrocution. Battery burns."

O'Neill cursed softly and tried to tamp down the rage building inside him. "Daniel's leg?"

"Our preliminary diagnosis is that the bullet clipped him without doing any major damage. He fell and twisted his ankle pretty badly, and there may be minor muscle damage. Nothing he won't recover from with some rest."

"And Bill?"

The doctor nodded to the room across the hall, where the scientist's sleeping form could be seen. "He's in better shape, and his burns are less extensive. Just tired and sore."

Jack shook his head in disgust for the man who'd done this to them. His brown eyes darkened as they swept over Daniel's form, now safely ensconced in the small bed. "How soon can I take him home?"

The doctor was tempted to say a week. That was standard procedure, and it didn't take much to see that the two patients needed at least that much rest to fully recuperate from their ordeal. But the look in this colonel's eyes made it clear that this was anything but an ordinary situation, even for the military. "Tomorrow," he decided out loud. "I can patch them up, but..."

Jack understood. "We'll take care of the rest."

"I have no doubt he'll be fine, colonel." And for the first time in a long string of saying that to anxious relatives, he really didn't. With a respectful nod, the doctor left O'Neill to his vigil in the hallway.

Awareness came slowly to Daniel's tired mind. The first thing to register was sensation: the cool flow of air-conditioned oxygen across his cheek, the softness of the lightweight sheet thrown across him, the blessed firmness of the mattress beneath him.

Next to come was sound. He heard the beeping of a monitor off to his right. _Hospital_, his brain recognized. And finally, a tiny noise echoed into his ear. A sound that was so utterly familiar and comforting that it convinced him once and for all that this wasn't some dehydration-induced hallucination.

It was the sound of Jack O'Neill sighing in complete and total boredom.

"Jack?" The word came out thick and dry, and Daniel felt like his tongue had been welded to the roof of his moth.

The other man startled violently. "Daniel!" Jack's hair was a complete mess, sticking out at all angles like he'd been raking his fingers through it. His eyes looked tired, and there were rings under them that confirmed Daniel's suspicions that Jack probably hadn't left his side since they'd gotten here.

A cup of ice chips came to Daniel's lips and he gratefully accepted a few slivers of moisture to wet his mouth and throat. "Thanks," he managed, and his voice was more like the one Jack remembered.

"Any time." Jack's voice was soft and his eyes were shining a bit more than usual. Daniel remembered that expression. He'd seen it before. Only now it seemed harder to accept, because that time they'd both known that he was going to die. But now, he was alive and it shocked him that Jack could still worry for him that much.

Somewhere between falling from ascension and battling Anubis and getting kidnapped by terrorists, Daniel had forgotten that Jack O'Neill was his best friend. But looking at that familiar face now, he remembered. "You came for me," the archaeologist noted unnecessarily.

"Always," came the simple reply. His mildly offended tone registered and Daniel could almost hear the "what else was I gonna do?" tagged to the end of his statement. After what felt like eons of neglecting the gesture, Daniel smiled.

"When can I get out of here?"

"Tomorrow. Captain Smith, the guy that got us here, is our pilot home."

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "Smith?"

"Special ops."

"Ah." Something else occurred to Daniel and his gaze sought Jack's urgently. "Sam and Teal'c?"

"Checked in with Hammond about an hour ago. They're getting home about the same time as us."

"Where were they?"

"They went after the super soldier. Blew up a whole crapload of 'em too, from the sound of it."

"The _what_?"

O'Neill shrugged. "Carter's idea, not mine."

Daniel considered this a moment. "It has a ring."

"That's what I said!" the colonel agreed. He stood and winced as his knees popped. "You hungry?"

"Very," his friend replied without hesitation.

"I'll grab us some food." O'Neill started towards the door.

"Jack…" there was too much that needed to be said.

"I know." And Daniel knew he did. "I'll grab us some chow and then we'll…" he made a few vague gestures. "Eat. And chat a little." He left Daniel to the cream-colored walls of his room. The archaeologist wasn't worried; his friend would be back to find him shortly.

Jack always found him. With a contented sigh, Daniel reached for his ice chips.

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**Author's Note: A thousand thanks to Ren for her support and dedicated look-over of this before I posted it. I hope you all enjoyed it, as I had a bit of a struggle finding the balance between the Jack and Daniel uber-emotional fics that are totally out of character and the ones where they end up hating each other. I think this one fit the bill. Icon should be coming soon! **

**Cheers :) **


	4. Icon

"**Icon"**

Daniel had been missing for just over three weeks. Three long, tedious weeks of useless negotiations and a whole lot of sitting around and hoping that wasn't getting anything done. Three weeks, and all Brigadier General Jack O'Neill could think about was that it had been four _months_ since Daniel had been over for pizza and a movie. It was a pretty random thought in the middle of a crisis, even for Jack. But it was a relatively important one, and the General allowed his mind to absorb it as he stood in the empty briefing room and stared down at the inactive Stargate.

They just hadn't had the time, the silver-haired officer reflected as he shoved his hands into his pockets. Sure, they'd gone out to dinner, Jack and Carter and Daniel and Teal'c, after Jack had first taken over the SGC. To celebrate his and Carter's respective promotions…and though it was never said, to have one last night together as a team. But O'Neill had an early morning planned and there hadn't been the usual silent understanding that Daniel would be sleeping in his guestroom after a late night of bad TVO movies and beer. The four of them had gone their separate ways: Carter and Teal'c back to the base, Jack to his house to iron his uniform and get some sleep and Daniel to his apartment to water his plants and collect his mail.

And sure, before that they'd been busy saving the planet (again), and before _that_ Jack had been frozen in stasis in an Ancient sleep device. Not to mention that in just the last month since that dinner, they'd had that nasty incident with Replicators, dealt with Camulus and Baal and fought a battle with a rapidly growing plant.

…But why hadn't he had Daniel over?

O'Neill was guiltily aware that he and Daniel had spent hardly any time together in recent months. This was the first time since that shenanigan in Honduras, though, that Jack had been away from the wayward archaeologist long enough to really miss him. Or maybe he just hadn't let himself. Being the head of an entire military base was a lot different than being the leader of said base's flagship team. George had warned him that his relationships would have to be different now.

A little voice brought that line of reasoning to a screeching halt. _Hang on. Since when?_ Jack shook his head in disgust at his train of thought. Screw that "don't get attached" crap! He was already attached. This was Daniel, for cryin' out loud!

He'd been busy. That was all. Daniel was most _definitely_ still his best friend, and there wasn't anything more to say. It was just the crazy schedule.

Jack was more than a little relieved that he'd gotten that straightened out.

Dark brown eyes flickering over the great stone ring below him, Jack decided that some serious reconnecting was in order. As soon as Daniel got back, anyway. And he would most definitely get back. _Any minute now_… Despite his expectant gaze, the Gate Room remained stubbornly silent. The General heaved an irritated sigh and stalked off to his office.

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Daniel heaved a long sigh and leaned against a gigantic tree in Leda's yard. He closed his eyes against the setting sun, mentally replaying his conversation with his hostess for the thousandth time since that morning.

"_You believe your people can help us." _

"_Yes."_

He did. But that simple comment had brought back thoughts of home…of his friends that Daniel had been trying to avoid. His blue eyes looked absently into the darkening sky as his thoughts brushed past images of Sam in her lab, Teal'c crossed-legged in his quarters…Jack behind his desk, totally oblivious to Daniel's presence in the doorway. The anthropologist shifted uneasily at the thought of his friend and crossed his arms over his chest. Despite the ripple of uneasiness it caused, Daniel couldn't help but wonder what Jack was doing right now. Probably sitting in his office pretending to do paperwork or hovering over Sam's shoulder in the lab. Or maybe he was sitting down to a cheesy TV movie in his house with a bottle of beer and a microwaved dinner. The image brought an unexpected pang of nostalgia. He and Jack had spent virtually no time together in recent months. Between saving the planet and Jack's promotion, there just hadn't been the time. …Or had there and he just hadn't tried? Things were different now, with Jack as the commanding officer of the entire base. Daniel reflected sadly that with his new responsibilities, the General probably barely noticed he was gone.

_Since when has that ever stopped you?_ A little voice asked. Daniel's eyes focused suddenly as he realized what an idiot he was being. It had _never_ stopped him! Not in seven years of being Jack O'Neill's best friend had Daniel ever seriously taken the older man's lack of emotional displays to heart. Well that wasn't entirely true. But the principal was, and suddenly Daniel was struck with a desire to get home by Friday night so he could walk into Jack's house and sit down to pizza and beer.

_Speaking of getting back…_With a new determination in his movements, the homesick member of SG-1 went to try his radio again. "Guys? Helloooo…"

And then, with a crackle of static, the response he'd begun to give up hope of ever hearing trickled through the signal. "Daniel?"

Relief flooded through him and he slumped as the tension of the past weeks drained out of him and a grin involuntarily split his face. "Jack. Nice to hear your voice."

"Likewise. You coming home or what?"

Things were going to be just fine.

---

Jack bounced impatiently on the balls of his feet as he stood at the base of the Stargate's ramp. The chevrons seemed to take eons to slide into place, and when Walter finally called "Chevron seven locked!" from the control room it was at least another two minutes before anyone stepped through. He was ready to march up and try and pull them through, one-way wormhole be danged, when three figures tripped lightly out of the event horizon, ripples spreading in their wake.

Jack's gaze moved from Carter's ear-to-ear grin on the right to Teal'c smugly tilted head on the left. As he came to Daniel's form in the middle, he found that he couldn't blame either of them for their victorious expressions. He also couldn't seem to speak. Finally he managed to clear his throat. "Welcome home."

Daniel's blue eyes twinkled as they took in the dull gray room around him. Jack noticed the little changes in his appearance: his glasses were missing and he was sporting a new nice-looking leather jacket. Most surprisingly of all, he didn't appear to be scratched, bruised or even mortally injured. A smile started to creep along Jack's lips and tugged them up at the corners as the travelers advanced towards him and the wormhole shut off with a muffled "whoosh."

To the surprise of everyone in visual range, (including the people who had seen him do it once before), when the three member of SG-1 reached the bottom of the ramp, the commanding officer of the SGC stepped forward and pulled the prodigal archaeologist into a quick hug. "Good to have you back," Jack greeted his friend before stepping back a little and clapping him on the shoulder.

"Good to be back," Daniel managed with a grin to rival Jack's. The two men fell into step as they moved out of the Gate Room toward the infirmary. Sam and Teal'c handed their weapons off to waiting SF's and trailed after them, trading an amused look. At the infirmary door, O'Neill clapped Daniel on the shoulder again. "I have some people at the Pentagon to call. I'll come check up on ya when I'm done." He put a hand on Teal'c's arm as he passed and shot a wink at Carter. "Good work."

Sam grinned back and answered for both of them. "Thank you, sir."

With a jaunty spring to his step, Jack whistled all the way back to his office. George would be waiting for his call.

---

A little more than half an hour later, Jack was back in the infirmary doors watching Daniel take the last shot of his post-mission physical. Carter and Teal'c had taken O'Neill's silent presence to mean that he had dibs on Daniel for the night, and he was grateful that they hadn't protested. Sam had given her friend several hugs and a kiss on the cheek, making him promise that he'd tell her everything over coffee the next morning before she left. Teal'c had just given him another nod and his mouth stretched into the closest thing to a smile Jack had seem from him since that Jaffa joke. Jack had given them both another murmured word of thanks as they passed him before returning his gaze to Daniel.

He flinched in sympathy as the last hypodermic needle on the Doctor Brightman's tray made contact with his friend's arm. "Careful, doc," the General said jovially, formally announcing his presence by stepping into the room. "That's my best friend you're skewering."

Daniel's head came up and blue eyes met brown in companionable understanding. After a shared moment, Jack turned his gaze to the doctor. Not for the first time, he was momentarily surprised when he didn't see Janet Fraiser standing there instead. "He all checked out?"

"He's ready to go," she affirmed with a smile in her patient's direction. "No alien contagions and no prevalent wounds. Oh!" She turned back to her tray and Daniel winced at the thought of another shot, but Brightman turned around holding a pair of glasses. "Except for these." She handed them over in a triumphant gesture and the anthropologist thanked her with a smile as he slid them on.

He looked around the room for a moment to let his eyes readjust to his prescription before his gaze landed on Jack. He mocked surprise and then indifference. "Oh. You again."

The older man glared at him even as he gave him a hand off the cot. "Hey, I wouldn't talk that way to the guy who's taking you to dinner and a movie."

They strolled out the door, oblivious to the amused looks they were getting from the medical staff. Daniel raised an eyebrow at his friend. "Pizza and TVO?"

"You betcha," came the reply.

Daniel remained unrepentant as they entered the locker room down the hall. "I'll apologize once we watch something decent." Jack's mouth opened but Daniel cut him off with, "and hockey doesn't count." He opened his locker and pulled out the shirt and jeans he'd left there before the mission so many weeks ago.

With a disgruntled mutter Jack opened his own locker and pulled out his own street clothes. "Spoilsport."

"Bore," came the prompt reply.

"Victim," Jack shot back. He was openly grinning now as he pulled his shirt over his head.

Daniel shook his head despairingly and sat on the bench in the middle of the room to tie his shoes. "Sap," he accused the other man with an identical grin as Jack joined him on the bench.

The General gave him a haughty glance as he finished with his shoes and pulled on his jacket. "Let's get out of here." They did.

Neither of them mentioned that Jack never bothered to defend himself.

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**Author's Note: All hail Ren, who talked me into changing Jack's perspectivie a bit, and, in my opinion, made the entire fic way better as a result. Endgame is coming next.**


	5. Endgame

**End Game**

Many things in the universe are implied. The laws that govern the ways matter acts and the purpose of the human existence are just two examples of a long string of things that are very rarely expressed, but are inexplicably comprehended by every sentient being in the known galaxies. In a classic imitation of the universe around them, the people of Earth had incorporated this philosophy into their way of life. But no group of people, no organization or chain of command, grasped this principle as fully as the military.

The United States Military was full of unspoken rules. This unwritten but generally understood list included things as mundane as Number 27, which said, "If there is only one cup of Jello left and your commanding officer is behind you in the mess line, you leave him the Jello." It also covered things a little more important, like Number 7, which stated, "If another officer is having an emotional breakdown, you look away and let it happen. Under no circumstances do you talk about it later."

But the most important unspoken rule of all was the one that held the place of Number 1. "Never, under any circumstances, become best friends with someone under your command." Brigadier General Jack O'Neill had never put much stock in unwritten rules. 

With a sigh, the brown-eyed man dropped his keys on the island in his kitchen and went to shut the window as a highly unusual (for Colorado anyway) cool rain started misting down outside his cabin. He'd already had this conversation with himself at least three times on the drive home from the mountain after the whole Trust incident, but that didn't stop him from going through it again anyway. Jack wandered over to the thermostat and notched it up a couple of degrees as his brain rehearsed the memorized out to his problem.

To be fair, Unwritten Rule Number 1 had some leeway: clauses that could excuse a friendship. Still, most high-ranking officers of the military considered anything past a mutual respect to be an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate. It was messy, these veterans of long experience insisted. You get attached, it screws up your decisions. You start playing favorites. Worst of all, to the military eye anyway, you start to look weak. And to the people who cared enough to think up that rule in the first place, weakness was simply unacceptable.

But even hardcore military veterans had hearts; hence the three clauses they'd graciously attached to rule number 1. Clause A almost contradicted the rule entirely because it stated that real friendships were allowed if two people had served on the same team for any length of time. If two people had worked together for any amount of time longer than two or three years, a certain amount of camaraderie was even expected. But if one of you got promoted, you didn't do the whole friend thing on the military's time.

Clause B gave another easy out. If two officers were friends before one of them enlisted, then friendships were allowed. After all, in a service that promoted unity among its troops, how could pre-existing relationships be frowned upon?

Finally, there was Clause C: If two people worked in different branches of the military, or at least in different offices within the same branch, then best friend-type relationships were considered to be harmless enough to the chain of command to be allowed.

Jack found it appropriate that _technically_, his friendship with Daniel Jackson didn't break any of these rules. Except that it only fell under Clause A because Jack had liked Daniel enough to put him on his team in the first place. And Clause B only applied because _technically_ Daniel had never enlisted. O'Neill tended to throw out Clause C all together for the same reason.

Yet even with those justifications, O'Neill's own actions cancelled out whatever safety he might have gotten from them. And he did it on purpose, every time that he committed the cardinal sin of unspoken military friendship protocols: he called Daniel his best friend in front of other people. Not often, mind. But apparently, three times in the past eight years had been enough to make it common knowledge around Stargate Command. 

Tires squealed to a stop outside and the General started towards the door without really thinking about it, still dwelling on his reverie. It never ceased to amaze Jack that every time he came back to this ancient argument, he realized that he just didn't care what the Air Force said (or in this case didn't say) about proper friendships. After all, Daniel was a _civilian._ …But he was also a direct subordinate.

This last unexpected, Brigadier General-like thought made him pause half-way across the living room and held him there when he should have been answering the door by now as the doorbell rang several times in quick succession. Normally Daniel just came in instead of ringing the bell, which meant he was carrying something. And Jack knew without question that it was SG-1's archeologist who'd pulled into his driveway just moments before. Yet even as he crossed the remaining distance, that little thought niggled in the back of his brain and caused Jack to hesitate with his hand hovering above the knob for what was perhaps the longest pause in their history. But just like always, he gave in; because it was him, and it was Daniel, and it was actually starting to rain in earnest now so this was the only viable option if he ever wanted anything translated again. With a mental note to get to know some of the linguists working in Daniel's department better just in case, Jack swung open the door.

The brown-haired anthropologist stood casually on the porch, half-turned to look out at the rain. His patented half-smile pulled at his mouth as he turned to Jack, blue eyes twinkling behind his glasses. He held a case of beer in one hand and two bags full of Chinese takeout in the other. In respect to their customary ritual, Daniel raised the items to show why he was there, Jack acted surprised to see him and grabbed the beer, and the two men moved inside, the host elbowing the door closed behind them. This part was always carried out in silence, but quite unlike normal the two friends' easy banter didn't appear once Daniel was inside. In fact neither man said anything at all until they were in Jack's living room with their food and beer, the constant rain providing welcome background noise and filling what could have been an uncomfortable silence.

Finally, Daniel leaned back in his chair with his carton of sweet and sour pork and looked to Jack sitting on the couch opposite. "Why'd you do it?"

"Do what?" Daniel gave him a look. Jack knew exactly what he was talking about, and Daniel _knew_ that he knew. But he answered anyway.

"Why did you stop Pendergast from firing on that _alkesh_?"

O'Neill sighed and put down a half-eaten wanton, running a hand through his silver hair. "He didn't know if he could disable its engines without blowing it up."

"Without blowing _us_ up, you mean."

Jack gave him a "well duh" look and took a long drink of beer.

Daniel hesitated, fingers drumming on the side of his mostly full bottle. His friend rolled his eyes and reached for a carton of beef and broccoli. "If you're gonna say I should've taken the risk anyway and killed you guys along with our last Stargate, I don't want to hear it."

"I'm not complaining," Daniel reminded him. His blue eyes flickered away from Jack's face to settle on the raindrops exploding against the windowpane on the far wall. "It's just…"

"You think I'm playing favorites." It wasn't a question, and Daniel didn't bother to refute it. The younger man rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. Before he could speak, Jack beat him to it again. "And before you ask…no. I'm not sorry I did."

"I know." Daniel's tone was neutral, but Jack knew better than that.

"It was the best choice I had given the situation," he insisted.

"Really?"

Jack was mildly disturbed by the note of genuine curiosity in the other man's voice. "Really!" the General snapped defensively.

"Okay," came the mild reply. Daniel picked up his chopsticks again and started eating like the matter was closed. Jack couldn't believe he'd gotten off that easy. "Okay," he agreed with some relief. The two men returned to their food. Daniel chewed without comment. He was prepared to wait, but he had a feeling it wouldn't take long.

Sure enough, it was only a few minutes later that Jack broke the building tension and stood. Restlessly he walked to the kitchen and grabbed another beer, but the alcohol stayed unopened in his hand as he moved to the window, staring into the pouring rain. Daniel stood without moving to join his friend, placing his beer on the table. He watched Jack's familiar silhouette silently…and waited.

"You know me too well," Jack finally said without turning. His voice was soft, barely loud enough to hear over the rain outside.

Daniel put his hands in his pockets. "That's usually what happens when you've known someone for almost ten years."

"Ten?"

"Two more months and it'll be nine years since Abydos."

Jack tended to forget that he'd known Daniel a year longer than everyone else. Point of fact, Jack tended to forget that he'd ever _not_ known Daniel. "Maybe that's my problem," the General muttered with a hint of bitterness.

Daniel took a step towards him. "Problem?"

The older man winced; he hadn't meant to say that out loud. But there was nothing for it now. Daniel wouldn't just let this drop. "I got too close."

"Is that a bad thing?" Another step.

"When you're a General responsible for the lives of the people under your command, Daniel, then yeah. It is."

"Says who, the military? The Air Force?" Step.

"I _am_ the Air Force, Daniel!" Jack finally turned to face him, venting now because it couldn't be stopped. "I wear the uniform, I give orders, and I send people out to die every day because the _Air Force_ says its my freakin' _job_! Tell me why getting attached isn't going to make it worse!" He locked gazes with the other man, brown eyes searching. Waiting desperately for an answer and knowing that it wouldn't be the one he wanted.

Daniel took another step closer, but the distance between them felt much greater than the reality of four feet of hardwood floor. His blue eyes were sad, but he refused to drop Jack's gaze. "I can't."

Jack's shoulders slumped and he turned back to the window, but Daniel wasn't done. "What I _can _tell you is that because you 'got attached,' you saved Teal'c, who just happens to be this planet's best source of Goa'uld intelligence." Step. "And that without Sam, all of the technology we'd have gotten from that _alkesh_ never would have been deciphered anyway." With one last footfall, Daniel reached his side. Jack turned his head to listen, and Daniel obliged. "Like it or not, Jack, you _are_ attached. We're your friends." There was a moment of hesitation where Daniel wondered if he should say it, but he knew it was true so he went ahead. "We're family." When Jack didn't dispute that he took the final plunge. "And disregarding the fact that you probably owed us one…" he looked right into Jack's chocolate eyes and took his hands out of his pockets. "You wouldn't be _you_ without…" he made a vague hand gesture and turned to look out the window, his shoulder touching Jack's as he finished. "…_Us_."

There was a moment of silent understanding that can only be achieved by people who know each other too well as the two men stood shoulder to shoulder looking out at the world they'd saved together countless times over the past nine years. Finally, Jack turned his head to look at his friend. His best friend, through thick and thin, whether he liked it or not. The thought brought a smile to his face; not a big one, but a tiny curl to the corners of his lips that was just enough to tell Daniel that he was convinced. "So basically you're saying that I'm useless without you guys and I'm only saving your sorry butts because I know it."

The younger man tilted his head, eyes soft with amusement. "Uh…yeah."

"Yeah," Jack repeated, sighing. His hand came up seemingly of its own will to rest on the back of Daniel's neck: an affectionate gesture that had gone unused for several years. There was another pause, the two lost in their own thoughts before Jack suddenly shoved himself upright and moved back towards the couch. "Chess?

Daniel blinked and shook himself out of his reverie, turning from the window as the rain slowed and the sun began to struggle through the clouds. "Yeah, sure." He wandered back towards the couch as Jack cleared the small table of Styrofoam cartons and carefully moved the chessboard from its place on the fireplace mantle, their most recent half-played game preserved on the checkered surface. They really did know each other too well, the archaeologist reflected.

For a moment, he was almost sorry. Sorry that it tore Jack up to worry, sorry that his friend had to double- and triple-guess his own decisions because one of his makeshift family was involved. But then Daniel heard the chirping of birds as the rain went away and the sun started to shine again and he smelled the tang of lukewarm Chinese food…and he was glad. Jack had saved his life today --not because he was playing favorites-- But because it was him, and it was Jack…and it was just what best friends did.

He wouldn't have it any other way.

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**Author's Note: I don't know how she does it, but she does. Once again Ren's fine-tooth combing of this contributed mightily to a much better final product. My thanks, as always, go to her and to you for reading this. Feel free to drop me a line if you have a moment, whether to review or to give me more suggestions for moments you'd like to see. Cheers.**


	6. Threads

**Threads**

There were no fish in this pond. Not a single one--trout, salmon, herring, catfish or otherwise. Brigadier General Jack O'Neill knew this like he knew his own name. This small bit of information had never bothered him before, and after over two decades of owning his cabin and its pond, the lack of aquatic wildlife didn't worry him any more now than it had all those years ago when he'd first come back after his father's death.

He still remembered that day vividly in his mind. It had been hot, just like today, despite the fact that a freshly married O'Neill had pulled up in his then-new truck at just after eight in the morning. He'd only been to Minnesota twice since his father's funeral; both fishing trips that seemed a little too empty without him. The cabin had actually been in the O'Neill family for years, but even when his Dad had left it to his only son in his will, Jack never set foot on the property. In the end, he'd worked up the guts to take a flight out to have a look around and see if it was suitable for his purposes.

Finding a place of his own away from work had actually been Sara's idea. She wanted him to have somewhere to go to decompress, somewhere to take their kids one day, when they had them. And the fact that she trusted him to be on his own when they'd only been married for a year was just another reason for Jack to love her. As it turned out, Jack found that he'd missed this old stomping ground more than he wanted to avoid the memories, and over the next few years the cabin became a family vacation spot instead of a private getaway. First for him and Sara to escape to for long weekends, then as a place to bring Charlie.

Then, after losing Charlie and after the divorce, Jack had avoided the once-treasured place and the golden memories it harbored with a passion born of deep depression. The dock went unused once more, the creaky floorboard inside gathered a new layer of dust and the small rooms that had once held the echoes of his wife's love and his son's giggles had fallen silent and melancholy. …Until SG-1 had come along, anyway.

With all the subtleness of Teal'c entering a small room with his staff weapon, O'Neill's three teammates had suddenly become an essential part of his life and Jack had soon realized that a place to get away was as much a necessity for them as it was for him. Eventually, one by one, Jack's new family built their own memories around the old cabin and its pristine fishless pond; though to be fair, Carter had only started hers today, and it had taken eight years of cajoling and several personal catastrophes to convince her to come at all.

But none of that mattered now. All that mattered was that for now, they were here, work wasn't and for a few precious days Jack wouldn't be pacing his cramped office driving himself insane wondering where they were. He wouldn't lose sleep imagining how Carter was holding up off world. He would replace the hours he spent missing Teal'c's quiet presence with long lectures on the merits of camping. And he wouldn't get distracted at odd moments of the day when Daniel didn't show up at his office door with lunch or something to chat about, only to remember that his best friend was probably dead somewhere

Point of fact, Daniel hadn't been out of his sight since Jack had taken him by the arm, dragged him from his office and told him to pack for a week at the cabin. It was a testament to how insane their year had been that the archaeologist hadn't protested once. Carter and Teal'c had met them at the elevator, the four of them had piled into Jack's truck and three hours of preparation later, the team had been on the road. Considering the arm-twisting he normally had to do to get _one _of them to come, he knew that it had really been too easy. But Jack sensed his own desperation in Daniel, and even in Carter and Teal'c; they needed this time to reconnect, to reassure themselves that there was still good and joy in the world…and that regardless of what came next, it would be the four of them. Together, doing what they did best.

For Jack, this outing had taken on a whole other meaning: it was a way to be with them one last time before everything changed. And everything would, all too soon. Jack had things to tell his team, new assignments in new places that would forever make them different (and geographically separated) people. Eventually he would tell them. Just not quite yet. Carter and Teal'c were only staying for two more days before they went back to Colorado. Daniel would be finishing out the week per Jack's request. That gave him plenty of time, Jack reasoned. 48 hours was more time than he'd ever need. He knew that for a fact: the three times he'd practiced his speech, Jack had only taken three minutes.

Right now, he just wanted to get a burger on the grill and enjoy the afternoon. With a heavy sigh of satisfaction the General levered himself out of the deck chair next to Carter. He handed off his fishing pole to Teal'c and navigated his way around the chair to get to Daniel, who was several feet behind them by the cooler. Jack clapped his friend on the shoulder. "C'mon, we'll get the grub started."

"Try not to let him near the open flame, Daniel." Sam teased over her shoulder with an innocent grin at her CO.

"That insubordination, Carter?" Jack didn't particularly care; it was worth it to see her smile.

"Self-preservation, Sir," she shot right back. "I've seen your cooking."

"I agree with Colonel Carter," Teal'c rumbled as he took O'Neill's vacated chair with pole in hand. "Perhaps you should allow DanielJackson to prepare the meal."

Jack turned to his last defender and managed to keep the mock-offended expression pasted on his face despite the urge to laugh when confronted with the twinkle in Daniel's blue eyes. "You hear that?" the older man demanded. "That was a blatant disregard of tradition _and_ my unofficial patriarchal status!"

The corners of Daniel's mouth curled dangerously as his hands came to rest in the pockets of his jeans. Several unspoken sarcastic comments flashed across his face in rapid succession before he settled on a safe answer. "Considering that most of our food traditions revolve around burnt MRE's…I think that _anything_ that doesn't taste like chicken is a good thing."

Jack shuddered extravagantly as the two men turned towards the cabin. "Those are the only things I don't miss about going off world."

Daniel shook his head in bemusement. "Never mind the mortal peril, the lousy hours, all the fate-of-the-world decisions we made on a daily basis…"

His friend shot him a grin as they paused on the wooden porch. "Nah. That was the fun stuff!" Then the way Daniel had phrased his statement made Jack freeze with his hand halfway to the door. "You said 'made'," he noted softly.

Their eyes held for a long moment before Daniel took a breath that was almost a sigh. "Yeah," he confirmed, his voice lowered to avoid attention from the other two sitting a few feet away. "I've gotta talk to you about that, actually."

Jack sighed heavily. He had some talking of his own to do. "Yeah. Later, all right?" The silent plea must have carried through, because after another long pause, Daniel gave him a little nod and a twitch of the lips to show he understood.

Without another word, he strode past Jack and into the cabin. "We doing burgers?"

Shaking off a burst of affection so strong it threatened to smother him, the silver-haired man followed Daniel to the kitchen. "They're thawing in the fridge. There's salad stuff in there too."

The next hour was spent mostly in companionable silence as Daniel got the salad ready and Jack started up the grill, their mutual quiet only broken occasionally by requests for utensils or short periods of light-hearted banter. It soothed the nerves that Daniel had started to doubt would ever settle again after the year they'd had. The archaeologist was immeasurably glad that Jack had postponed their conversation. He knew what needed to be said. He just didn't relish saying it.

Considering Jack's reaction the last two times Daniel had petitioned to go the Pegasus Galaxy, Daniel wasn't expecting a warm reception this time around. But he was going to do this. He _needed_ to do this. Now, after they'd finally beaten the Goa'uld and permanently disassembled the Replicators, Daniel finally had the time to go and see the fruits of eight years of labor. Besides, he had at least a month of vacation days stored up. What better place to get away than another Galaxy?

...At least that was what he was planning to tell Jack. Not that both of those reasons weren't true, because they were. They just weren't the _only_ reasons. Or even the most important ones. Jack was leaving the SGC. It was chance that Daniel had found out about it at all. …Well, if you called a phone call from George Hammond chance. And the anthropologist had made his decision even before he'd echoed George's goodbye and hung up. He wouldn't do it. Daniel had stepped through the Stargate a thousand times since that first mission to Abydos with Jack, and having his best friend there was the only reason he'd _continued_ to do it. This last year had been so vital in so many ways. But it had also been close to intolerable. Jack hadn't been there; not often enough, anyway.

Daniel chopped a tomato with unnecessary vigor as his mind drifted back to the present. "Daniel!" Jack's voice floated in through the open door leading to the porch. "Bring the mustard out, would ya?"

"Yeah!" Daniel yelled back. He tugged open the fridge and grabbed a yellow bottle from the second shelf, briefly pausing to double-check the label. His mind was already back on more important matters.

Daniel was leaving. Because he would _not_ go through that Stargate one more time without Jack there to watch his back, either on his team or at the very least in the control room. This was what best friends did: they stuck together. They supported each other's decisions. Jack was finally, finally finished with all of this. And because he was, so was Daniel.

The only problem was finding a way to tell him.

---

It was long, long after the sun had set and the four of them had retired to their respective rooms when Jack gave up on sleep and kicked off his tangled covers. He'd never been able to sleep on this couch anyway. But with Carter in his room, Daniel on the guest room bed and Teal'c on the floor (despite his roommate's protests that the Jaffa needed the bed more than he did), there wasn't anywhere else. Unless he wanted to move his blankets to the floor of Carter's room. For just a second, Jack toyed with the highly satisfying mental image of her completely shocked, half-apprehensive and half-amused face before shaking himself back into reality. It wasn't worth it. Not yet anyway.

Standing took more effort than it used to. Jack winced as both his knees popped and his back gave a protesting twinge. When had he gotten old? _You've been old for years,_ the small snarky voice that had long ago started to sound like Sara informed him. _You just finally slowed down long enough to notice._ The General heaved a sigh and ran a hand down his tired, careworn face. Sleep seemed to be a long time coming. He needed something to keep him awake while he did the midnight rounds he'd become so accustomed to over the past years of off-world missions. The worst part of this last year had been the nights when he'd woken up to realize that his internal body clock's alert to go check on his team wasn't needed. _It was never needed. You did it anyway._ Jack made a face at the dark shadows of the room. There was only one thing that could get rid of that small, self-deprecating voice. Daniel.

In lieu of walking into the guest room and waking is best friend up to assuage his lowered self-esteem, Jack settled for the next best thing. Coffee. With another wince when his left ankle popped, he headed towards the darkened kitchen.

With the ease of long experience, Jack scooped pre-ground beans from Daniel's stash in the freezer into the filter, poured cold water in and set the machine to medium heat: the only setting that still worked on the ancient coffee maker that had been there for as long as Jack could remember. He moved to the front door again and leaned against the frame, staring out at the moonlit pond as he waited for the coffee to finish brewing.

O'Neill lost track of time as the peaceful vision before him blurred under the weight of his thoughts and memories. Finally, the creak of a warped floorboard brought him back to reality. He knew without turning to look that Daniel had joined him. The younger man padded across the tiny living room, coming to stand just behind Jack as they both looked out into the night. "Smelled coffee," was his only explanation.

Jack's lips curled into a little grin. He should have known better than to expect Daniel to sleep through a pot of Columbian roast. "It should be done."

"It is," his friend assured him through a badly concealed yawn. "Why do you think I just came out?"

With an affectionate shake of his head, Jack turned and followed Daniel back into the kitchen. It took only a few minutes for them to doctor their cups accordingly and vacate out onto the porch to avoid disturbing the others. The night was relatively warm, and they ended up using the blanket Jack had grabbed up from the couch as a cushion as they settled side by side on the steps. Jack was a little less than halfway through his cup when Daniel finally broke the silence. "You're leaving."

His friend turned to stare at him. The older man knew better than to be surprised, but Jack was a little disconcerted that Daniel had just knocked off the first minute and a half of his carefully planned speech. With the ease of long-time friends, he came back with his own bit of hidden knowledge. "So are you."

It was Daniel's head that turned this time. His blue eyes met Jack's with sharp surprise. "What?"

Jack heaved a sigh and looked back out at the pond, deliberately avoiding his friend's gaze as he took another sip of coffee. "I approved your request."

That was it. Four words. Four simple little words that had the sudden and profound ability to rob Daniel Jackson of all speech. After a few beats of his friend doing a passable goldfish impression, Jack took pity on him and explained. "The Pentagon ended up giving me your paperwork a little earlier than you'd planned."

Daniel shook his head in sad amusement. "Hammond."

"Hammond," Jack confirmed with a little grin.

"Me too," the younger man admitted. At Jack's raised eyebrow, Daniel offered a miniscule shrug. "He called me last week. As soon as he got your paperwork."

Jack muttered something that Daniel couldn't quite make out, but he had the feeling that it was directed at George and it probably wasn't very flattering. "He's a smart man," he noted with a little smile.

Jack turned to look him in the eye again. His voice this time was soft…and maybe even a little apologetic. "I can't do it any more, Daniel." He looked back out to the pond again, frustrated with himself and the entire situation. Daniel stayed silent, letting him do this without interruption. _For once_, O'Neill noted wryly. "Yeah, the Washington guys pushed to get me up there, when they realized that George was actually going to retire this time. But I didn't put up much of a fight." With a heavy sigh, brown eyes floated hesitantly back to meet blue. His tone was beseeching. He needed his team to understand this. Even more, he needed _Daniel_ to understand this. "It's over, Daniel. The Goa'uld are toast, the Replicators are gone and we've got nothing left to fight. But it's not going to last." Finally, Daniel was surprised by something. But Jack saw the telltale creasing of his brow and cut him off before he could ask. "There's always going to be something else. Always. One big bad gets knocked down, another one comes storming in. It's a cycle or something." The half-grin he shot Daniel's way wasn't returned, but Jack pressed on. "I was on the front lines for the Goa'uld and the Replicators." His face darkened. "Mostly, anyway." His countenance cleared a little and he looked to Daniel again. "I won't be on the sidelines for the next one."

Daniel nodded his silent comprehension and there was another long silence. Finally, the archaeologist twisted on the step to look at Jack again. "Why did you approve my request to go to Pegasus?"

Jack heaved a tremendous sigh and clenched his fist, balling his Styrofoam cup into a ball before answering. "Because you shouldn't have to do all of this again." His dark gaze flickered up briefly before settling back on the white, malleable shards in his hand. "You guys, at least, should be done. You, Carter, Teal'c. You deserve that." Finally, his head rose and their gazes locked. Jack's voice was filled with bittersweet pain. "And if that means sending Carter to Area 51 and letting Teal'c go off to play with his new Jaffa buddies and you…" his voice cracked dangerously but he didn't look away, "…you going off to some other galaxy to look at some Ancient doohickeys, then that's how it's gonna be."

For some odd reason, Daniel's eyes were dangerously close to spilling over. He managed a smile despite the intense wave of sorrow that suddenly overtook his heart. This was really it. By giving them each what they wanted Jack was doing the unimaginable. He was breaking them apart. For a brief instant, Daniel was filled with anger and a melancholy so strong that he just wanted everything to be the way it was, back when it was the four of them against the galaxy and whatever it wanted to throw at them. But then his resentment drained and he was left with a consuming bittersweet joy burrowing deep into his soul. It was over. Finally, for the four of them, it was over. And finally, even as he saw the contained tears in his own eyes matched in Jack's, he managed to speak. "Thank you," he whispered.

Jack's hand came to rest on the other man's shoulder, and the smile he gave him was full of the sorrow and the regret…and the overwhelming, happy relief that finally, someone understood things the way Jack did. "Welcome," he managed to whisper back.

They sat there for a long time, Jack's arm firmly around Daniel's shoulders. The moonlight sparkled down on them and the crickets chirped around them and for just a moment, they looked like two ordinary men. In the fickle silver light, they could be mistaken for two average best friends who were just out for a fishing trip. A passerby wouldn't be able to tell that these same two men had saved not just the planet, but the galaxy more times than anyone really cared to count.

For just a moment, they looked normal.

Thank heaven they knew better.

Jack looked out at the pond, and then to Daniel's form beside him, and he felt an overwhelming sense of relief. There were no fish in that pond. And Daniel would always be right beside him, in spirit at least, even if they were a galaxy apart.

It was good to know that in a crazy, changing universe, at least those two things would always be the same.

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**Author's Note: Well there you have it! I really enjoyed working on this one, and I took my time with it because I wanted to get the dialogue exactly right. This episode deserved some justice. Even though Mobius and Threads technically end at the same time, I will be doing a tag for Mobius next, in which I'll cover our favorite four going off to their new assignments. It would have simply made this one too long to include that here. After that, I plan on covering a few season 9 episodes, then going back and looking at Hathor, The Light, and Scorched Earth at least. Any more requests? How about comments? As ever, I am humbly greatful for your time if you decide to drop a review. Cheers!**


	7. Moebius II

**Moebius II**

As far as Jack O'Neill was concerned, the apartment was just too small. That was all there was to it. Sure, the kitchen was nice, but when did he ever actually cook now that he'd converted Daniel to takeout? And yeah, OK, the balcony had a killer view of the less busy parts of Washington D.C., but it only had room for one deck chair, and when was the last time he just sat somewhere without Teal'c there trying to _kelnoreem?_ Besides, he couldn't even see the stars through all the city lights, and if there was one thing Jack had to have in a home, it was a good place to set up his telescope. He wasn't even going to start on how pathetically inadequate the size of the dining room was; the table didn't have nearly enough room for even the smaller gadgets that Carter brought over on slow days to reassemble while he made coffee.

The General shifted uneasily, treading his feet into the not-quite-thick-enough blue carpet. Jack ran a hand through his completely silver hair, which he had finally given up trying to dye or pretend not to notice. The worn leather of his favorite jacket shifted with his movements, and his dark brown eyes swept the well-decorated space again. He nodded to himself, silently agreeing with his own assessment. Too small. There was no way he could live here.

"This place is nice," a deceptively casual voice noted from behind him. Jack turned to stare at Daniel Jackson in disbelief. His friend was standing in the doorway to the decent-sized bathroom next to the kitchen, hands in the pockets of his jeans, blue eyes surveying the room from behind his glasses.

"It's too small," O'Neill informed him in a tone of voice that said Daniel should have reached that conclusion on his own. "Look at the balcony! It's…" he made a vague gesture with both hands, trying to indicate how completely non-Teal'c compatible it was, and how the telescope would never fit.

If Daniel had any inkling what Jack was talking about, he chose to ignore it. The archeologist walked over to the sliding glass door that led to the space in question, looking out at the scenery. "You'd have a great view."

The older man shook his head dramatically and sighed. "Remind me again why you're here hindering my search for a decent place?"

"Because you asked me to," Daniel shot back without turning from the bustle of America's capital city stretched out below them. "I still think that you should just get a house."

Jack winced, glad that Daniel's back was to him. To be honest, for the first week that he'd been organizing his household goods in preparation for his move here, Jack had fully intended to find a nice, medium-sized house in D.C. to settle in to. It was only when he realized that more than half of his household goods were going to Daniel, Sam and Teal'c before he moved anyway that he had finally admitted that he wouldn't be needing as much room as he'd planned on. Not to mention that property value in D.C. was a little above what he wanted to spend on a yacht, let alone a house.

More than that though, Jack wanted an apartment because it required paying rent. The thought of landlords and bills and a rent check every month was soothing, in an odd way. It reminded him that this whole Washington thing was only temporary.

Oh, and how much he hoped that was true.

He hadn't told Daniel any of this, and point of fact he didn't plan to in the future, either. His friend didn't need to know how hard this was on Jack. The two of them had been very stiff-upper-lip about the whole debacle, and Jack planned on keeping it that way. So instead of explaining his whole list of reasons on why a house was a bad idea, Jack settled on, "Too much hassle."

Ignoring Daniel's raised eyebrow, Jack cleared his throat and whipped out the list of apartment addresses he and Daniel had compiled on the plane two days ago, neatly marking off yet another prospect. What had originally started out as a neat list of thirteen apartments when they'd started their search yesterday had now dwindled to three, with no signs of Jack being satisfied with any of them. There was always something wrong--the couch was too small, there was no room for the TV, the view was bad. Daniel was starting to wonder if Jack was really refusing to choose one because he didn't like them or because he didn't want to admit that he was actually moving.

The archeologist avoided bringing that point up because if he did, he would have to decide if he'd let Jack blow them off because they really weren't quite right, or because he didn't want to admit that his best friend was leaving either. So he only sighed and turned his back on the amazing downtown view, hands firmly in his pockets again. "Where next?"

"Second star to the left and straight on 'till midnight," Jack retorted with disturbing ease and a bright smile. "I'm driving."

His friend took a moment to absorb this, and by the time he figured out Jack's comment, the older man was already out the door. "You have no idea where we are!" Daniel cried, chasing after him.

"Do too!" Jack defended from the elevators ten feet down the hallway.

"Do not," came the archeologist's succinct reply.

"Doo too."

"Not."

"Too!"

The argument lasted them all the way to the next apartment--which, Jack was quick to point out, just happened to be two streets over and past a clock store.

---

Something about this apartment niggled at the back of Daniel's brain. Maybe it was because it was the very last apartment on Jack's list, but somehow the anthropologist sensed it was more than that. It was a nice place, but there was some little feel about it that was…off. He knew he was probably being ridiculous; they hadn't even gotten inside yet. Still, the southwestern adobe-like walls and stairs that led up to the apartment's door gave him a sense of déjà vu, but he couldn't remember another place that looked like this one at all. He shook his head a little to clear it. Apparently the gesture wasn't as subtle as he thought because Jack looked over at him curiously as they got out of the car. "You OK?"

Daniel shrugged, his blue eyes still tracing the walls. "Yeah…" He caught Jack's unconvinced look and managed a quirk of the lips.

The General took a critical look at the entrance. "Maybe you don't like the color."

An odd bitterness in his normally smooth tone alerted Daniel that maybe he wasn't the only one who didn't like this place. "Jack?"

The other man shook his head firmly, the silver in his hair flashing in the dying sun of late evening. "I'm good. Just…reminded me of something." Without further comment, Jack led the way to the stairs.

It was only when Daniel paused at the bottom of the staircase and looked up at Jack that the memory finally stirred to life. Suddenly, Jack's leather jacket and jeans were replaced with a torn black tunic and trousers. The adobe walls closed in around them and became a cylinder of rock, with slits for fake windows and a horizontal hallway far above them. Daniel could feel the cable knit of the sweater he was wearing. And then the words came: sad, angry, shouted words that echoed and overlapped in fast flashes of white light.

"_I leave and look at the mess you get yourself into." _

"_I'm energy now..."_

_"What good's the power to make the wind blow or toss lightning around if you can't use it to spring an old friend outta jail?" _

"…_You'll cease to be the Jack O'Neill we know long before that." _

"_I can help you ascend."_

"_You can't fight your way out of this."_

_"Then help me!"_

_"If the Daniel Jackson I knew was really here..."_

_"I am!"_

_"Then do something."_

_Do something._

"Daniel?"

Daniel opened his eyes and blinked hard, blinded by the setting sun that Jack's half-bent silhouette was only partially blocking. The anthropologist realized that he was curled up in a tight ball in the corner of the stairwell, with Jack hovering protectively over him. He managed a shaky breath, intending to spout out something along the lines of "I must be tired," or, "Sorry, I tripped." What actually came out was, "I remember."

Jack helped him to his feet and turned him around, dusting off the back of his jacket like a nit-picking mother sending her youngest son off to his first day of school. "Remember…what?"

Daniel closed his eyes and let the memories run through him again. "Something from when I was Ascended. A cell with walls like these. Only you were wearing black."

Jack's hands stilled and Daniel turned to face him. The older man's face was pale and when he finally moved, it was only to lean against the wall next to him in a studied gesture of completely faked nonchalance. It took him another minute to comment, and when he did it was only one word. "Ba'al."

Daniel closed his eyes again with a wince. Oh, yes. Now that Jack said it, he remembered Ba'al. He remembered a lot of things about Jack's seemingly unending imprisonment by the Goa'uld system lord that he dearly wished he didn't. "Ba'al." His eyes snapped open and he took an anxious step towards his friend, needing to speak, but having absolutely no idea what to say. "Jack--"

"It's fine." Jack cut him off, turning to go up the last three stairs like the matter was closed.

"No, it's not!" Daniel watched his friend turn slowly at his words, hands clenched inside his pockets.

O'Neill took a deep breath, his brown gaze focusing past the other man's left shoulder instead of on his eyes. "Look, Daniel, I'm over it. You did what you had to do."

The anthropologist watched him for a long moment, trying to judge by his body language if he really meant that. Jack shifted uncomfortably under Daniel's gaze. "Yeah, OK, so I know I didn't seem like it at the time, but hindsight is twenty-twenty and all that crap." He finally lifted his eyes to meet Daniel's blue ones and his voice took on a quieter, serious tone. "I never said this, but…it helped. You being there. It was good to know that you were still around, you know?"

Daniel took a step closer and removed the awkward distance between them. "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm sorry I didn't get you out of there." He held up a hand to stop his friend's retort. "You were right. I could have done something."

It was Jack's turn to scrutinize, but finally he reached out and put a hand on Daniel's shoulder. "I'm glad you didn't. At least when you got kicked out of the cosmic glee club, it was for a whole planet. I woulda felt like a baby if you'd just done it for me."

The younger man met his eyes seriously. "Maybe. But next time your life is in my hands, remind me that I owe you one."

Jack grinned and clapped him on the shoulder, moving him towards the apartment door. "You owe me way more than one, Danny. I'm going to start collecting one of these days."

They entered the apartment's spacious entryway. Jack gave a low whistle, doing a full turn to take everything in. Daniel moved farther inside, catching sight of a small spiral staircase in the back corner. Moments later his voiced called out from above Jack's head. "It's got a loft!"

"There's another room down here that's supposed to be a study," Jack yelled back from a small room next to the open-air kitchen. "I could turn it into a guest room." They met at the bottom of the loft stairs, Daniel standing on the final step so his head was above Jack's.

The archaeologist looked around again, nodding slowly. "This place is great, Jack."

Finally, reluctantly, Jack nodded in agreement. There was still one more thing though. "Does the room up there have a view?"

Daniel's mouth pulled into a grin of its own volition. "Come see."

Jack did. The small, cozy loft at the top of the stairs had more than just a _view_. The place had a frickin' _vista_! In a daze, the older man walked to the glass door leading out to the small balcony. Standing there, in a space just big enough for two deck chairs _and_ a telescope, O'Neill had an unadultured view of early evening sky. The apartment was just far enough away from central D.C. that the sound of traffic was barely noticeable.

For what seemed like a long time, but was really only a few minutes, the two men stood silently. Suddenly, with overwhelming force, Jack's suppressed emotions crashed in upon him. He was leaving. Really leaving, this time. And Daniel and the rest of his family would be half a country (or several galaxies, depending on the day) away. What were they going to do without him there to watch their backs and tuck them in?

…What was Jack going to do without _them_? Blinking back moisture in his eyes that he would later blame on an errant beam of sunlight, Jack cleared his throat. "Daniel…"

Right on cue, Daniel's phone rang and shattered the moment. With a wince and a muttered curse in what sounded like Ancient, the archeologist answered. "Jackson." His brow creased with worry. "Whoa! Sam, slow down!"

Jack swiveled instantly to face him, worry plastered on his face. Daniel answered his unspoken question with a reassuring wave, concentrating on his teammate. The young man groaned in horror and looked at his watch. "When?" The answer was one he didn't like, drawing another muttered curse from him. He looked at his watch again. "I'll be there. Thanks, Sam. Yeah, will do."

Before Jack could even ask, Daniel snapped his phone shut and gave him an apologetic look. "The _Daedalus _is leaving ahead of schedule. They're taking off in two days. If I want to get everything packed…"

"You're gonna have to get back," his best friend finished for him with a heavy sigh. He tried not to look as disappointed as he felt. "C'mon, we have to get to the airport. You drive, I'll call ahead and get you a ride home."

Daniel hesitated. "Jack…"

"I'm the one who signed you up for this thing, Daniel," Jack reminded him. "I can sign the lease on this place tomorrow. Let's get going."

They headed down the stairs and out of the apartment. Daniel cast his friend a sly look. "Sam said to say 'hi.'"

"OK," Jack responded indifferently.

Daniel made a disbelieving noise in the back of his throat. "Oh, _please_! Like I haven't noticed you refusing to look at apartments without room for a king-sized bed!"

Jack froze halfway into the passenger side and stared at his friend in shock. After a few moments of incoherent, silent mouthing, he finally managed, "For cryin' out loud, Daniel! I've only been out of Cheyenne Mountain for a week!"

"Sure, Jack," Daniel placated as he started the car.

Jack got the rest of the way in and slammed his door moodily. "I need a lot of space," he grumped defensively.

"I believe you, Jack," his friend replied with the distracted air that Jack had come to recognize as the one Daniel used when he was humoring someone who didn't know what they were talking about.

O'Neill opened his mouth to fight back, realized he was never going to win that argument on grounds of the last eight years, snapped his mouth shut and reached for his phone to call Daniel a plane.

The anthropologist threaded his way through traffic and bit his lip to hide a smile, pretending not to notice.

---

Daniel stared in shock at the plane before him. "You got me a _jet_?"

Jack smiled proudly, gazing with blatant admiration at the small craft before them on the tarmac. "Not just any jet, Daniel. _My_ private jet, courtesy of the Air Force. The privileges of rank and all that jazz."

The two men shared a moment of impressed silence before Daniel took a deep breath, dropped his bag on the ground and turned to face his friend. "Sorry I can't stay."

"Sorry I can't come," Jack replied with an equal amount of regret shining in his eyes. The older man cleared his throat, which was suddenly clogged with what felt like the start of tears. Before he had a chance to really embarrass himself, Jack reached out and pulled Daniel into a tight bear hug.

"Take care of yourself," Jack murmured into his friend's ear. "No more dieing or getting yourself nearly killed unless Carter or Teal'c are there, alright?"

Daniel managed a slightly soggy laugh and closed his eyes. "I'll try. The guest room's always open, you know."

Jack finally pulled back a little and looked him firmly in the eye. "I know, Daniel. I'll hold you to it, trust me. What, you think just because I'm halfway across the country you get to skimp off? I expect daily phone calls whenever galaxy location permits, and at least weekly visits." He stepped back fully to gesture at the plane. "Heck, with this baby, I'll be out there every weekend."

"I'll hold you to that," Daniel echoed his friend's promise. His eyes started shining again, the light from the airport windows behind him casting a sheen on his blue pupils.

Jack's eyes were just as wet. He reached out again and placed a hand at the juncture of Daniel's neck and shoulder. "I'm gonna miss you guys."

Recognizing his own words, Daniel managed a tiny smile and mimicked Jack's gesture with his own hand. "Yeah. You too."

The pilot appeared at the top of the stairs leading to the plain. "Dr. Jackson? We're ready to take off."

Without taking his eyes off of Jack, Daniel bent to retrieve his bag.

The General gave him an encouraging smile that didn't quite make it through the tears now trickling from his eyes. "I'll see you in two days. I've gotta be out there for the launch anyway."

Daniel nodded, wiping his own eyes on the back of his sleeve. He looked over Jack's shoulder for a moment before meeting his eyes again. " 'Don't be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetime, is certain for those who are friends.'"

Jack pointed at him with a grin. "Richard Bach."

Daniel shook his head in amusement. "You never cease to amaze me."

"I _can_ read, you know," his friend replied.

Daniel stopped at the top of the staircase and looked back. "Sure. You just use the skill selectively so it doesn't wear off."

Jack glared. "Don't you have a plane to catch?"

They both sobered again. Then Daniel cleared his throat and offered a little shrug. "Well, I guess I should…" he took a step inside the plane.

Jack couldn't help it. "Hey, Daniel?" When his friend turned to meet his eyes, Jack's voice was serious. "Best friends, right?"

Daniel didn't answer. He just gave Jack a look that said he was being an idiot, waved, and promptly stepped inside the plane.

Watching as the jet taxied to the runway and started its liftoff, Jack wondered why he even thought he had to ask. The jet had apparently cleared with the tower, because all too soon it picked up speed and lifted off, soaring up into the freshly shining stars. Jack stood on the tarmac, hands in pockets, staring after it for a long time after it disappeared. "Be safe," he murmured to the empty air.

With one last deep, sustaining breath, General Jack O'Neill smiled up at the stars. He'd been up there, Carter's "you can't see any of those planets from earth" lecture be danged. He'd saved the galaxy, and he had a whole, un-blown-up planet and a family closer than blood to show for it. Jack turned on his heel and started back towards the airport, leaving the stars behind. After saving the frickin' galaxy for eight years, Washington was going to be a piece of cake.

Besides, they'd wiped out the System Lords, nearly all of the other Goa'uld, and the Replicators.

No other big bads would show up to wage horrible war against for another year. At least.

…Right?

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**Author's Note: Yeah, yeah, I do know how long it's been. I really am sorry, but the start of a wicked-busy semester and four- count 'em, FOUR- rewrites of this ending scene put me back a little. Many, many thanks to Ren and her friendship and support, to say nothing of her advice and editing skills. May she live long and write well. I will be going back in time now and doing a few earlier-season tags, probably Shades of Gray and The Light, and hopefully Need before I start in on season 9, though Avalon at least will be included in those. In the mean time, tell me what you thought and give me more! Cheers.**


	8. Heroes II

"**Heroes II"**

Stargate Command was eerily silent. This alone was enough to alert anyone who knew the general operations of the secret military base that something was wrong. Normally, the corridor outside of the infirmary was filled with the staccato tap of military-issue boots, the chatter of passerby and the general noises of an active workplace. Yet today, the dull gray corridor was silent. Not just quiet, but completely absent of any noise outside of the hum of machinery and the quiet _beep…beep…beep _of a heart monitor echoing from inside the infirmary. The medical center itself was dark, completely abandoned except for one nurse on the night shift and two patients in the beds farthest from the door.

The SGC was mourning.

No one would come to the infirmary outside an emergency for a long time. Doctor Janet Frasier was still imprinted on the walls and in the air with memories too stark for her friends and colleagues to confront so soon. Those closest to her, the ones that knew and loved her best, had already come and gone from this room. Samantha Carter had broken down here, when she had looked to Janet's office and realized that her friend would never set foot in it again. Even worse, she had realized with a sharp pang of sickness that she would have to be the one to call Cassie and explain that her mother was dead.

Teal'c had only stayed long enough to ensure that O'Neill would live and that Doctor Frasier's body was treated with proper respect before he fled, taking his blond teammate with him despite her sobbed protests. "You can do no more here, Major Carter," the Jaffa had rumbled softly. After that, Sam allowed him to steer her out of the room.

But Daniel…Daniel had stayed. Someone had to be there when Jack woke up. Someone had to tell him about Janet.

And Daniel needed the time to watch his best friend breath and assure himself that at least one of his friends had survived. The archaeologist had pushed aside his grief and the echoes of the staff blast that had taken Janet away from them in order to pace restlessly all through Jack's emergency care, and now to concentrate on his recovery. He would celebrate the living before he mourned the dead. It was a lesson he'd learned the hard way; there were too many dead now to stop life to remember them. She wouldn't have wanted that anyway.

At around two in the morning of the day after Jack's "detrimental but not mortal injury" had been taken care of and the colonel had been put under anesthesia, the nurse on duty had finally insisted that Dr. Jackson go get something to eat. She almost ordered him to go sleep as well, but one look at his sad blue eyes stopped that suggestion in its tracks. She _had _informed him, though, that Colonel O'Neill wasn't supposed to wake for another six hours, at least, and that there was no reason for him to lose sleep sitting in a hard infirmary chair until then.

Daniel had managed a polite almost-smile, told her thank you and that he would be back in a few minutes.

His returning footsteps echoed against the cold gray walls of the hallway, breaking the silence that had settled there like a mourning shroud. The sound of Daniel's shoes hitting the hard floor seemed to add to the tired tension floating in the air, instead of relieving it like it should have. He'd only been gone long enough to find a few power bars stashed in his desk drawer and pilfer a cup of Jell-O from the mess. Intellectually, Daniel knew nothing was likely to have happened in the fifteen minutes he'd been gone. He was edgy anyway, his pace steadily increasing as he neared the infirmary. _You're hallucinating from lack of sleep, _the anthropologist berated himself mentally. _Jack's not supposed to wake up for hours._

It was a testament to Daniel's self-control that he didn't burst into hysterical laughter when Jack woke up just as his friend reached his bedside. "Hey," the colonel muttered in a cracked, dry voice.

Daniel wondered idly how Jack knew he was there when the older man hadn't even opened his eyes yet. "Hey," he greeted in return. He was concerned to hear his own voice waver dangerously. He cleared his throat industriously and got Jack a glass of water from the cart at the end of his bed. Carefully helping the other man sit up, Daniel felt the adrenaline-induced tension that had fueled him through his long vigil fading fast.

Jack's brown eyes creased in concern as he watched his friend ease himself onto the next cot over. Something was wrong. The older man gave Daniel a few moments to collect himself, finishing off his water without comment. "You look like crap," he finally observed.

Daniel's blue eyes flitted up to meet his and Jack froze at the haunted blackness of that gaze. Something was _seriously_ wrong! "Daniel?"

When tears appeared in his friend's eyes Jack started to panic. "Daniel." His voice portrayed his message. _Hold it together. Tell me. _

Finally Daniel's mouth opened to answer but it took a few seconds for any sound to come out. "Jack…"

Jack knew that tone and felt his heart plummet right out of his chest. Someone was dead. Dead. The only question that remained was _who_? "What happened?" he choked out.

"Janet," Daniel whispered, far past despair. It was all he needed to say. Jack's eyes closed in pain and his head fell back like it was suddenly too heavy for his neck. When he opened his eyes again, it was to be confronted by the sight of the unbreakable Daniel Jackson in tears.

With a silent prayer that Wells had gotten better sleeping pills than they'd given _him_, Jack reached forward to wrap a hand around Daniel's shuddering wrist. The movement only hurt his bandaged wound a little. "C'mere," he murmured, and tugged the younger man over.

Daniel settled on the edge of O'Neill's bed. He looked about ready to fall over. Jack gave him a look and motioned for him to sit back, scooting over to make room despite the mild twinge it gave him. He watched as Daniel made himself as comfortable as possible at the other end of the bed, one leg bent to dangle towards the floor and the other stretched out so his toe nearly touched Jack's shoulder. He leaned back against the bed rail behind him and heaved a heavy sigh. It was only then that Jack noticed that they'd given him a big cot this time. He must have been worse off than he'd thought.

The anthropologist blinked hard and looked up at the ceiling, trying in vain to hold back the rest of the tears that choked his voice. "She was trying to help Wells. We-we had just gotten him turned over when--" He cut off, biting his lip hard and closing his eyes again. Jack moved a hand to his friend's ankle and gave it an encouraging squeeze.

After another moment, Daniel took a deep, shuddering breath and continued. "The staff blast came out of nowhere. She-I couldn't do anything." He repeated it again, softly, and Jack had the feeling that he didn't actually believe it. "I couldn't do anything." His voice had dropped to barely a whisper, the tears streaming openly down his cheeks now. "She was dead before she hit the ground…"

Jack could only shake his head helplessly. "Ah, Daniel…"

The younger man moved restlessly and stood again, running his hands through his hair. "How many more, Jack?" he demanded suddenly, still keeping his voice low. "How many people are we--am _I—_going to lose before this is _over_?!"

His friend stayed silent, letting him vent. Besides the sure knowledge that he sucked at this sentimental stuff, Jack knew that Daniel's questions needed answers no one could give. They'd all asked the same thing countless times since they'd started this. After Charlie. After Sha're. After Dryac. After Kawalski. After Skaara and the entire population of Abydos. After every time a fellow soldier died on a mission gone wrong or at the hands of an egotistical false god. …After Daniel's deaths. _Deaths._ Plural. Especially after those. But after a lifetime of asking, Jack still didn't know the answer. "I dunno, Daniel," he sighed, knowing how hollow the words were. His voice was laden with years of melancholy memories. "But as long as it's _over_, someday, I think she'd be happy."

It was the best he could do.

His words seemed to suck the last remnants of energy from Daniel's body. The young man sat heavily on the bed again, propping his elbows on his knees. "'M tired," he mumbled sleepily. Jack knew he was talking soul-tired as much as anything. He knew the feeling.

"C'mere," Jack said again. This time, Daniel settled with his head propped up next to Jack's, the two men a little squished on the largish cot, but not overly uncomfortable.

Daniel had just enough presence of mind left to mumble, "I hope no one walks in."

"Don't ask, don't tell, remember?" Jack kidded weakly, hoping for a smile. In retrospect, that wasn't the best way to go about it, but he figured even a stern glare would be a good thing at this point.

"That's not even close to funny, Jack," Daniel warned. His friend knew better; he'd seen the tiny curl of Daniel's lips. It wasn't a smile. Jack knew it was the closest either of them would get to one for a long time. They were silent for several minutes and Jack's eyelids started to droop. He still had sleeping meds in his system, after all.

Just before he was about to drift off completely, Daniel's barely-there voice brought him back. "Jack?"

"Yeah?" he answered back, equally soft.

"I'm glad you're alive," came the almost-too-soft-to-hear reply.

Finally, in the dim light of the infirmary with his best friend next to him, Jack let the tears fall. "Me too, Daniel," he whispered. He closed his eyes against the void where Janet Frasier should have been standing. "Me too…"

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**Author's Note: For having no idea how this one would turn out when I started it, I'm pretty happy with the results. Need will be coming shortly (in fact it's in the final stages of being re-read before posting) and I'm hoping to hit Shades of Gray and The Light before Christmas. Crosses fingers**

**Hope you enjoyed this, and let me know what you think. Thanks to everyone who continues to read these, and, of course, to Ren.**


	9. Need

"**Need"**

For the sixth time tonight, Daniel Jackson wakes up yelling. Jack can't really call it screaming; it's not sustained or high and girly. No, Daniel yells: one short, semi-loud cry that escapes just before the shadowy nightmares of withdrawal slink back into his head.

He's supposed to be better today. Jack's sure that Frasier told him that Daniel would be coherent and stable by the fifth day. He looks at the clock and realizes that technically it's only been the fifth day for about two hours and he should probably cut Janet some slack.

The thrashing against leather restraints stops, Daniel sleeps again and Jack gives a silent cheer. Maybe things _are _getting better. He wishes that he had more than a _maybe_. He wishes that they'd never seen that planet, that he'd stopped Daniel's mad dash through the woods, that the girl had just fallen right off that cliff. He wishes that Daniel had never even seen a sarcophagus, let alone used one. He wishes that neither of them would be forced deal with the memories of Daniel pointing a loaded gun at Jack's head with his finger already half-squeezing the trigger.

More than anything, though, Jack wishes that Daniel would stop yelling. Because every time he yells, Jack is reminded that he is separated from his best friend by a thick glass window and the two armed guards outside Isolation Room Two's door. Eventually Jack notices that this sleeping spell is lasting longer than the others and he dares to hope that maybe they're finally getting out of the woods.

For the first time in over a week, Jack clearly sees Daniel in his mind's eye, and the picture is not of the shuddering, helpless wreck before him now, but of the brilliant, sarcastic man that the colonel has depended on for years. And Jack thinks that maybe they'll get back to that someday soon, and that they'll put this hellish week behind them.

Then Daniel yells again and this time he's really awake, blue eyes searching the small room frantically for solace that Jack can't give him from up in the observation room.

And for the seventh time tonight, Jack puts his hand on the glass and tells himself that maybe this will be the last time he'll have to watch Daniel fight off the demons in his head. For the seventh time tonight, Daniel falls asleep again and that's when Jack realizes that they'll be just fine.

In the third hour of the fifth day, Jack stops using the word _maybe_.

Seven hours later, Daniel's fever breaks and over lunch Jack fills him in on what he's missed the last few days. They never talk about what happened in that closet. Three days after that, Daniel asks Jack to come over and help him repaint his bedroom, and they're back to normal so fast that Jack can barely believe it.

But it isn't until a long time later that he knows it's finally over.

Twelve days after Daniel's last yell, Jack O'Neill finally sleeps through an entire night without waking up to the sound of his own cry echoing in his ears.

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**Author's Note: I know, it was...different. And in present tense. Sorry if I kind of threw you through a loop on this one, but I tried two other versions in past tense and they just did _not_ work, so here we are. Tell me what you think, whether because you hated it or tolerated it! Shades of Gray is coming next (don't worry, it'll be back to normal!) and after that, The Light. Cheers, and happy pre-Christmas shopping season!**


	10. Shades of Grey

**Shades of Grey**

This time, it was Daniel who opened his door to Jack. The archaeologist wasn't really surprised to see O'Neill standing there looking chagrined. He wasn't sure he was glad, either. "Jack," he greeted. The role reversal was more than bitterly ironic.

"Daniel."

There was an uncomfortable pause. Daniel noticed that Jack hadn't brought food or drink as a peace offering. It was slightly comforting that the older man realized that this was serious enough to need more than edibles for them to get over it. He let his friend stew for another few moments before he finally stepped back, his blue eyes closed off behind his glasses.

Jack accepted the silent invitation and walked past his team member into the lamp-lit apartment. The sound of the door closing behind him had a sinister note to it that the colonel had never noticed before. He turned uneasily to Daniel, hands in his pockets. "So…"

After another long moment of staring, Daniel gave in and extended the proverbial olive branch on a heavy sigh. "So."

A tiny bit of tension evaporated from Jack's rigid form, but not much. His brown eyes pierced Daniel's with a rarely shown intensity that seemed to make the whole room come to a stop and wait. Finally, he let out a sigh of his own and ran a hand through his hair before making eye contact with the anthropologist again. The little things like the six feet between them and the fact that Jack hadn't removed his jacket weren't lost on either of them.

O'Neill broke the silence first, and his gaze was steadier than Daniel'd expected it to be. "I did what I had to do," he said simply. "But I picked a really crappy way to do it."

There was another pause before Daniel nodded slowly, his posture relaxing a bit. "Yeah," he agreed. There was a warmth in his voice that hadn't been there since they'd gotten to that doomed negotiation on Tollana.

Jack took that as an invitation to pull up a chair and stay a while, so he did. He flopped down on Daniel's couch, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so old. Daniel hesitated, and then took the chair across from the couch so they could see each other. There was another long pause, but this time it was more to gather their thoughts than to stew in tension.

Jack spoke first again. "Their base sucked."

Daniel's blue eyes looked up from his folded hands, humor starting to sparkle very faintly in their depths. "Oh?"

"Seriously," the other man confirmed. "It was dark, cold, no windows. It wasn't even underground, for cryin' out loud! They didn't want anyone 'seeing something they weren't supposed to.'" The sarcastic air quotes he placed around those last words made Daniel grin, just a little. Jack continued on, walking the fine line between talking just for talking's sake and actually ranting. "And their big scientist? Some brunette with a vendetta because Carter beat her out of a spot at the SGC. And they didn't have a single person there who could translate stuff." The two men shared a knowing look before Jack continued, "I know I give you a hard time about it, but seriously. I want to know what the alien thingy--" he saw Daniel's warning look and smoothly corrected himself, "—_artifact _says before I mess with it and accidentally blow the planet up. They had no idea what they were doing."

Daniel seemed to consider this for a moment before standing again. "Want a drink?"

Jack breathed a sigh of relief and settled into the couch. _Apology accepted. _"Yeah, sure."

A moment later, the host returned with orange juice for both of them. Jack watched him as he sat down, waiting. He deserved something too, didn't he? At least a _little _gesture of good faith...

Finally, when it didn't look like any confession was forthcoming, he prompted his teammate with, "Well?"

Daniel set down his orange juice and looked at his hands for a moment before returning his gaze to Jack's. "I almost shot Makepeace just so Hammond would have to give Sam the team," he admitted with a grin.

Jack instantly felt better. "Really?"

"I _knew_ he was evil," the archaeologist continued like Jack hadn't interrupted. "He called Teal'c 'the Jaffa' within hearing range and he kept calling Sam 'Doctor Carter.'"

Jack winced, remembering the lecture he'd gotten the one time he'd tried _that_. "Ouch."

Daniel nodded, sipping from his juice. A mischievous twinkle was now obviously present in his eyes. "He did let us work, though. And he let me get away with things you never would because he admitted that I was smarter than him."

"I know you're smarter than me!" Jack retorted, sounding mildly offended. "I just figure you have to be wrong _sometimes_."

"He let me do things on my own," Daniel admitted. "It was nice--in a quiet, peaceful kind of way." Jack glared at him more out of habit than anything else. Daniel finished off his juice and leaned forward. "How'd you know that Makepeace was the mole?"

"I did a drop-off; we had some alien cloaking device that Maybourne wanted to get back to earth. He gave us the coordinates, I went and dropped. You guys almost walked into me! I was dialing out when you guys walked through."

Daniel's eyes widened. "I _thought _I saw you in those trees!" He shook his head a little before getting back on track. "How did Makepeace get the device without us noticing?"

Jack made a disgusted noise. "He pretended to tie his shoes! He knelt down next to the DHD, the thing was right under the rocks around the base."

The younger man groaned. "I thought he was checking out Sam's—well, I thought he was doing something else."

O'Neill's vision turned red. "He was _checking out Carter?_"

Daniel gave him a look that clearly said, "Now you see why I wanted to shoot him."

Jack glowered. "It's a good thing that guy is serving a life sentence, or he'd be dead right now."

There was a moment of silence in which the two of them were comfortably united in their indignation.

Eventually Daniel looked over at his best friend and let himself really smile for the first time in days. "Hey, Jack?"

Brown eyes met blue. "Yeah?"

"Welcome back."

Jack gave a smile of his own and finally took off his jacket. "Thanks. It's good to be home."

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**Author's Note: I hope you liked this one. See? It's back to past tense and everything! Many thanks to everyone who continues to read this humble little series; each hit and review means a lot to me. Merry Christmas to all you stargate fans out there, and look for The Light in the next week. Cheers!**


	11. The Light

**The Light**

For the first time in their two-week stay in The Palace, as Jack had taken to calling it, Daniel felt like himself again. His head didn't hurt, he could form coherent sentences and he was almost comfortable around balconies again. The real test of his revival, though, was that he was starting to be more annoyed at the fact that his team leader wouldn't leave him alone than comforted by it.

Jack hadn't let the archaeologist out of his sight for more than a few minutes at a time since they'd been stuck here. Sam had finally convinced O'Neill to take a walk with her to test out the limits of their slowly increasing freedom from the device.

Daniel had mouthed a silent "Thank you!" to her and tried not to smile when Jack waved goodbye to him. The first thing he'd done was go find a balcony to stand on for a while; Jack still wouldn't let him near one, and even though his memories from back on earth were still muted by the drugs in his system at the time, Daniel remembered the feel of the balcony rail underneath his hands and the sound of the desperation in Jack's voice and found that he couldn't exactly blame his friend for not wanting to be around heights for a while. Still, the protective instinct was starting to grate.

Eventually the novelty had worn off and Daniel had wandered back to the Gate room to take a look at some glyphs on the DHD he'd been meaning to translate. He'd found Loren already there, staring off into space with an absent look on his face that had become a familiar presence over the last few days of SG-1's forced vacation here.

Teal'c was off exploring the rest of the building, leaving Loren and Daniel to themselves. The two of them were sitting side by side on the stone stairs, content to be silent. Daniel felt a kinship to the alien teenager that was similar to the one he shared with Cassie; he knew what it was like to face life without parents. He hadn't pressured the boy for details, not once. Which was probably why Loren came to find Daniel when he felt the need to get away from Jack for a while.

Loren had been shifting in his seat for the last five minutes. Daniel sensed an impending question, but he pretended not to notice, shaking his pen a little and coaxing a few more words from its rapidly dwindling ink supply onto the pages of his journal. Finally the teenager gave in and turned so he was facing Daniel's profile. "You and Jack are very close."

The archaeologist closed his journal and looked thoughtful for a moment, as if the statement required serious deliberation. "Yeah, I guess we are."

Loren tilted his head quizzically. "You are not sure?"

"No, it's not that. It's just…" he trailed off, not at all sure how to finish. "My relationship with Jack is…complicated."

Loren turned to face him fully, effectively bringing Daniel's focus completely onto him. Neither of them noticed when O'Neill came to a stop just inside the door to the room and stood in the shadows, arms crossed over his P-90, to listen.

The young alien continued unabated. "Have you known each other a long time?"

A smile played across Daniel's face. "Sure seems like it some days."

"I thought so!" Loren cried triumphantly. Jack couldn't help the grin that spread across his face at the kid's enthusiasm even as he ducked back a little further into the shadows to make sure Daniel wouldn't see him. Loren's next question, though, was enough to make Jack's head come up in surprise. "You are brothers."

Jack enjoyed the look of momentary befuddlement on Daniel's face. The anthropologist quickly pulled himself together, though, and O'Neill was even more surprised at his friend's answer. "I guess you could say that." At Loren's eager expression, Daniel continued thoughtfully. "We're…Jack and I met under very…difficult circumstances. We didn't get along very well."

Jack winced at the memory. Those first few days on Abydos weren't on his list of better personality moments.

Daniel's eyes had misted over a little as he sorted through the memories. "But we had to work together, and in the end we defeated an evil, false god. Like the kind that built the machine." He gestured contemptuously at the room that held the device that was keeping them all here. Jack ducked backward quickly to keep out of their eye line.

Loren's face reminded Jack of a toddler waiting for a bedtime story. "What happened then?"

"Then?" Daniel blew out a breath. "Then he went back to Earth, where we came from, and I stayed on the planet that we saved. My wife was there, and her family. We were happy there for about a year until…"

Jack was about to step forward to save Daniel the pain of having to tell this story, but the anthropologist started up again so quickly that the colonel didn't get the chance.

Even Loren seemed to understand that these memories were still painful to Daniel. His voice was much softer this time when he prompted, "Until?"

Daniel's eyes focused back on the here and now. "Until she was taken by one of those false gods and enslaved by them." A bittersweet smile chased across his face and Jack's chest ached a little at the sight of it. "Her brother was taken, too. Jack liked him. You remind me a little of him, actually."

O'Neill started in surprise; he thought he'd been the only one to note how much like Skaara this alien orphan was.

"What happened to them?" said orphan whispered.

"We found them, after we searched for a long time. Skaara went back home. Sha're, my wife…died."

Loren stared at the man before him in evident shock. "I am sorry, Daniel."

"Me too," the anthropologist said with that same melancholy look in his eyes. He shook his head a little, as if to clear it. "But anyway," he continued in a business-like tone, "Jack's always been there. We've been through a lot together. He's a stubborn idiot a lot of the time, and he doesn't always listen to people like he should."

The man in question grimaced a little; he deserved that, but still…

But Daniel wasn't finished. "But without him, we wouldn't be here. None of us would." His blue eyes left Loren's fascinated face…to settle directly on Jack's. O'Neill realized that he should have known that Daniel had known he was there the entire time. He admitted his defeat with a wry grin in his friend's direction. Blue eyes met brown as Daniel finished, "I make things hard for him sometimes." Jack resisted the urge to snort, but Daniel's sincere gaze pierced him. "I trust him. Out of anyone in the galaxy, I'd trust him." His eyes drifted back to Loren's. "So yeah, I guess you could say we're brothers. On earth, we call that being someone's best friend."

Jack blinked a couple times in rapid succession to clear the moisture gathering in his eyes. Daniel glanced at him over Loren's shoulder with amused emotion in his eyes, a smile playing across his mouth even as he listened to the rapid questions coming from his attentive pupil.

O'Neill smiled back somewhat shakily. Then he nodded his head in thanks, waved a hand to say, "Don't get too carried away," and left the two of them to their little talk.

Jack figured it was about time that _he _showed his best friend some trust.

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**Author's Note: I know it's been a while, but things are back up and running! Origin and The Serpent's Lair are coming next. Tell me what you thought!**


	12. Origin

**Origin**

It was bizarre how something as small and stupid as a cup of coffee could make Colonel Cameron Mitchell feel like a complete and total outsider.

OK, to be fair it wasn't so much the cup of coffee as it was the way General O'Neill poured the coffee into the mug, stirred in two spoonfuls of sugar and handed the thing off to Daniel Jackson like they'd done this a hundred times. Which they probably had, come to think of it. And it wasn't even all of _that _so much as it was Jackson's easy smile and instant acceptance of the coffee mug and its contents as the two men took a seat in the mess hall. They took the table in the corner, and Mitchell realized suddenly that the reason everyone else avoided it was because SG-1 really _did _have an assigned space, even if they weren't technically SG-1 at the moment.

Mitchell's focused drifted back to the coffee in Daniel's hand as the archaeologist laughed at something O'Neill said and took a long drink. Cam was pretty sure that if _he'd _tried to give the man a cup of coffee, he'd have gotten the order wrong and Daniel wouldn't even have accepted it. It was a big sign of trust to drink something handed to you without checking it out first. Looking at the two men before him from his semi-hiding place in the shadows of the mess entrance, though, Mitchell could clearly see that _everything_ they did was about trust.

It was the little things: the way O'Neill stole a fry off of Jackson's plate without missing a beat in conversation, the expressive eye roll he received in return, the rapid-fire conversation that, if Cam's lip-reading skills weren't completely rusty, ranged everywhere from Vala to what was playing on the history channel that week to Jack's new post in Washington D.C.

It was only then that Cam realized that Daniel only ever called O'Neill--Brigadier General, mighty icon of the Air Force and biggest global hero _ever _Jack O'Neill--by his first name. The twang in Mitchell's gut at this revelation was similar to the one that he'd experienced when he realized that every Marine and Airman on the base called Jackson "Sir" unless they knew him personally. There was more to SG-1 than the title and the glory. In the end, the earth's frontline team was made up of four people who apparently loved each other very dearly.

Cam was starting to get that he wasn't going to win any of them over just by saying he'd read their mission reports. His mamma had told him that there were gonna be days like this, but he'd kinda figured on the "new kid" feelings wearing off after high school.

Despite his melancholy thoughts, he was starting to enjoy the spectacle put on by the two men before him. They had both finished off their plates and O'Neill was eyeing his friend's blue Jell-O cup with something close to lust. Daniel clearly saw the expression and his mouth twitched into a subtle grin as he said something too fast for Cam to lip-read; though later he would swear that he saw Sam's name in there somewhere. From the highly mock-offended look on O'Neill's face, this was clearly a jibe he'd had to endure before. Looking down his nose imperiously at his laughing friend, the General reached over with his spoon, stuck it solidly into Daniel's Jell-O, and dragged the cup over to his side of the table.

The anthropologist just smiled smugly and grabbed Jack's cup of green gelatin for himself. He murmured something again that Mitchell couldn't catch, but a second later he realized that they were talking about him because O'Neill turned a little to catch his eye with a grin.

Cam cleared his throat and smiled weakly back, hoping that they hadn't noticed him standing here staring at them for their entire meal. Whether they did or not, by silent consent the two seemed to decide that lunch was over. The cleanup process was another example of telepathic teamwork brought on by years of living, fighting and working together. O'Neill threw the garbage away, Jackson took the mugs and trays back over to the cleaning guys with a thankful smile, and they met again at the table.

For the first time since Cam had walked in, the two stopped talking. For a long moment they just stood there, apparently communicating silently. It wasn't until almost a full minute later that, to Mitchell's immense surprise, O'Neill reached out and pulled Daniel into a quick, manly hug.

It was clear they'd done this before, because the action wasn't awkward or embarrassing. It didn't last long, but it was more than long enough for everyone in the room to see it. Cam wondered just how often that sort of thing happened. No one else in the room was even raising an eyebrow.

Just as quickly as the goodbye embrace started, it ended. The two traded one last wry look and then O'Neill strode purposely towards the exit—and Cameron.

"C'mon, Mitchell," he said briskly as he passed the surprised Colonel. "I've got a surprise for ya."

Cam was sorely tempted to say, "I think you've done enough of that for one day, Sir," but he wasn't sure if even O'Neill would let him get away with that much. Instead he settled on, "As long as it's not a box of chocolates, Sir."

The General gave him a look that was somewhere between confused and impressed before turning on his heel suddenly like he'd forgotten something. "Hang on a second."

The gray-haired man leaned into the mess hall doorway and pegged Jackson with one last look. "Daniel!" He shouted across the room.

Blue eyes met brown and the anthropologist's face was completely serious when he said, in perfect matching pitch, "Jack?"

The two seemed to battle silently with their eyes for a moment before Jack nodded acceptance at whatever the heck Daniel had just told him. "Watch your back."

"Don't get too bored," his friend—no, _best _friend, Cam corrected himself—replied with a little grin.

Apparently, that was all O'Neill needed to hear. He swung around and started down the corridor again. "Coming, Mitchell?"

"Yes Sir," he was quick to reply, jogging to catch up.

_Whoo _boy, did he have his work cut out for him on this one.

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**Author's Note: I gotta admit, Mitchell was a lot of fun for this one. Hope you enjoyed it! Drop a line to tell me what you think. All other scheduled programming is off the table; I watched Unending this week and the tag for that one is coming out before anything else. I hope you don't mind the delay on some of your requests, but it's just something I have to do. Cheers!**


	13. Unending

**Unending**

Daniel Jackson didn't need either of his PhD's to know that it was stupid to stand in the middle of a hallway. Especially a hallway in the Pentagon where people were running past every five seconds politely bumping into him. But his brain just couldn't adjust to the environment he was experiencing.

It was just too _cramped_! There was no elbow space and the color scheme was depressingly stern and too dark for the already claustrophobic halls. This place was like every nitpick Jack O'Neill had ever had about his office back at the SGC all rolled into one stuffy government room. He couldn't imagine Jack even bearing the walk down this dark, crowded hallway every day, let alone getting any work done in the same building. Point of fact, Daniel would have thought he was in the wrong building completely if his best friend's name hadn't been neatly presented on the bronze plaque nailed to the door before him.

Daniel could practically hear Teal'c's voice in his head. _Look before you leap…_

Despite the reassurance (what little of it there was, anyway) that he was in the right place, the archaeologist hesitated before entering. Jack had no idea that Daniel was right outside his office--had no idea that his friend was even east of the Mississippi for that matter--and Daniel was tempted for just a moment to turn around and leave and forget the freakishly strong impulse that had propelled him all the way from Colorado to Washington D.C.

The anthropologist rocked on his heels indecisively for a moment, hands wedged into the pockets of his black slacks. "You're being an idiot," he muttered darkly to himself. The comment was one that Jack would have made, and it suddenly made Daniel feel better. He deliberately didn't take a deep breath or square his shoulders as he took a hand out of his pocket and opened the door. He even stepped through without any outward signs of hesitation.

He should have done this months ago. _Better late than never…_

The small reception area he walked into was surprisingly bright. It wasn't anything particularly special; there were standard-issue inspirational Air Force pictures on the walls, a placid green-and-blue color scheme and a door on the left-hand wall that no doubt led to the actual office. A young man with impressively shiny black hair looked up from behind a small oak desk by the door and smiled pleasantly. "Can I help you, sir?"

Daniel let the door close behind him and managed a genuine—if slightly tired—smile in return. "Hopefully. I'm looking for General O'Neill." The receptionist seemed to be waiting for something else, his head cocked expectantly. It took a moment for Daniel to cotton on. "Oh! I'm Daniel. Doctor--"

"Daniel _Jackson_?" the man interrupted with wide eyes.

The archaeologist offered a hesitant grin. "Heard about me, huh?"

"I don't hear about anything else some days," the young man admitted. With a grin at Daniel's evident surprise, he stood and offered his hand across the desk. "Mark Jenkins. It's a real honor, Doctor Jackson. I'm General O'Neill's receptionist—well, I mean I do a lot of things, but you can only have so many job titles before they have to pay you more…"

SG-1's anthropologist nodded sympathetically as he gave Mark's hand a firm shake. "So you're the Jack of all trades type?"

"And master of almost none of them," the other man admitted with a sheepish grin. "I've only been here for a week."

Daniel stuck his hands back into his pockets. "So…do you mind if I…" he jerked his head towards the door to the office.

Mark's face clouded over a little. "I'm sorry, Doctor, he's in the middle of an important--"

He was interrupted as the intercom on the desk buzzed suddenly and the blessedly familiar, obviously annoyed voice of Jack O'Neill filled the room. "_Jenkins!"_

The receptionist gave an eye roll so reminiscent of Walter Harriman that Daniel couldn't stifle a grin. Mark heaved a sigh and pressed the intercom button. "Yes sir?"

"_I can't get any reception in this freakin' office!_" O'Neill groused.

Jenkins looked to the ceiling for patience. "Yes sir, you mentioned that last week. Which is part of the reason that you have the landline. Would you like me to call someone, sir?"

"…_Yeah. Call up the Springs, would ya?"_

O'Neill's receptionist grinned with unsuppressed glee. "I'm pretty sure Doctor Jackson won't answer, sir."

There was a laden pause during which Daniel could practically hear Jack's brain working. "_…Oh?"_

"Yes sir," Mark confirmed. He traded a conspiratorial look with Daniel.

There was another pause, this one longer. Then the door opened and suddenly Jack was there, looking somewhere between annoyed and happily surprised. The silver-haired general put his hands into his pockets, deliberately casual, and leaned against the doorframe like they still saw each other every day and his friend had just dropped by from down the hall. "Daniel."

Teal'c had obviously called him already, the traitor.

"Jack," came the easy reply. Their eyes met and Daniel felt something inside him unwind; his muscles visibly relaxed and a weight felt as if it had been removed from his shoulders. The relief of knowing exactly what to say washed over him. _The best things in life are free…_

In an instant, he knew why he'd come. At some point, between Vala's sudden maturity and Mitchell's casual presence and Sam's quiet longing to be somewhere else and Teal'c's new gray hair, Daniel had finally run out of words. He'd left Colorado last night because he was at a complete and total loss; he couldn't find the right words for any of his teammates because he couldn't even find any for himself.

Fortunately, he and Jack had never needed words.

Jack's mask of indifference broke into a bright smile. He stepped forward and drew Daniel into a quick embrace. "What brings ya to D.C.?"

The younger man managed to keep his voice casual as he stepped back and shrugged. "Just thought I'd swing by."

Jack's eyes instantly narrowed. His gaze locked to Daniel's and a silent battle of wills occurred to determine if the younger man would give up the information readily or if Jack was going to have to drag it out of him.

Mark looked between the two with all the eagerness of an avid SG-1 fan. He could practically hear the conversation between them…or at least he would if they'd start talking already. After a long moment that almost turned awkward, Jack seemed to remember where he was. He held up a finger to Daniel and turned to Mark. His mouth opened but Jenkins interrupted him with, "Your appointments for the rest of the day can be cancelled, sir. I can hold your calls."

O'Neill blinked at him. "…Thank you."

"Of course, sir."

This time the silence definitely turned awkward. Finally Jack turned and pointed to his office. "I'll just…" he went and got his jacket and briefcase, tucking his shades into his pocket. He shooed Daniel out the door ahead of him and looked back to his receptionist. "Turn the lights out when you leave," he sing-songed. He shut the door before Mark could reply and took his place next to Daniel, settling his hat on his head.

The older man waited to speak until they were out in the late afternoon sun. Jack slid on his sunglasses and clapped his friend on the shoulder. "C'mon. We'll go back to my place so I can get into real clothes. Hungry?"

"Yeah," Daniel admitted. His blue eyes studiously avoided the other man's face. "Jack…"

For the first time in a long time, Jack wasn't sure what the anthropologist meant by that. "Daniel?"

The honesty in Jack's question made Daniel pull up short by his friend's familiar black truck. He sighed lightly and capitulated this first attempt because he had no idea what he was going to say. Daniel hated that more than almost anything else.

_Beggars can't be choosers, _he reminded himself. Any words would do for now; this was Jack, after all. He settled on, "It's good to see you."

"Likewise," his best friend replied softly. Then the general cleared his throat and unlocked the truck. "Here long?"

Daniel blinked at the question; he hadn't though that far ahead. "I'm not sure," he said with a slight creasing of the brow.

Jack knew that look—it didn't bode well. He gestured for Daniel to hop into the truck and started it up. "Got stuff?"

"It's on your doorstep," the anthropologist said with a little shrug. "I went there first."

"Remind me to get you a key," O'Neill sighed.

A thought suddenly struck him and Jack actually took his hands off the steering wheel to turn and look sharply at his friend. "For cryin' out loud, Daniel, you _do _have a key! Why the heck are your bags on my front step?"

With surprising dignity, the younger man rolled his eyes. "Vala has my keys."

Jack blinked twice as he absorbed this information. When Daniel failed to continue, he raised a prompting eyebrow.

"Oh," Daniel said with surprise. The flow of conversation had thrown him off. He'd forgotten for a moment there that Jack hadn't been around enough lately to know that "Vala" was all the explanation really needed these days. "She's staying at my apartment. House sitting."

Jack's eyebrows hiked up even higher, a dangerously knowing smile starting to play across his face. "Really!" he drawled out in a passable Irish accent. "House sittin', ya say."

"Just while I'm gone!" Daniel defended himself hastily. "To get my mail! And to water my plants and…feed my fish…" he trailed off at the outright grin lighting up his friend's face. "I'm never going to be able to convince you that we're not sleeping together, am I."

"That means you've gotta convince yourself first, Danny boy. She's quite the bombshell, eh?"

A private little smile flitted across the anthropologist's face. "Beauty is only skin deep, Jack."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," O'Neill insisted with a devilish smirk.

Daniel gave him a very sincere glare and turned to glower out the window. His best friend sensed his mood and wisely turned the conversation to small talk for the rest of the drive.

---

Jack couldn't remember the last time he'd been in a room with a conscious Daniel for more than ten minutes without one of them talking. They just weren't quiet people. To the two of them, quietness had always been just another aspect of timing, of waiting until the perfect moment to get the other guy to talk. There was a rhythm to their quiet. It _worked_ for them.

But this…this _lack of noise _that Daniel was sticking to all of a sudden, it was downright unnerving. This wasn't the anthropologist's "I'm going to ignore you so I can get work done" silence. It wasn't his "I'm going to sit here and be quiet until you cave in and talk" silence, either. It wasn't even his "I'm seriously angry with you and if I talk I might shoot you" silence. Jack could time those. He knew when they'd end and how they'd break and what his expected role was when conversation finally started up again.

Whoever first said, "Silence is golden," had obviously never been faced with a speechless archaeologist.

The Daniel Jackson sitting before him now was different than the man he'd known for almost ten years. This man had a whole new kind of silence that Jack couldn't understand or empathize with, let alone time. Daniel's silence spoke of _indecision_, a quiet stillness in the archaeologist's body that made it all too clear to Jack that his best friend had no idea what he wanted to say.

Daniel Jackson's ability to communicate was one of the things O'Neill based his world-view on. It was just a constant thing, like gravity working or the sun coming up in the morning or everyone having to die eventually. OK, to be fair it was even a little _more _constant than that last one because Daniel's communication skills had beaten death at least three times.

But now here he was: the unbeatable, unconquerable Dr. Jackson, sitting way too still with too few words in the middle of Jack's small living room looking like he had the most important thing in the world to say and no words to say it with.

Jack sat on the couch next to him and studied his tense figure for a long moment. "Hey," the older man murmured at last. He waited until Daniel's gaze wandered up to meet his. "What's up?"

Daniel shook his head helplessly, biting his lip as he stared off into the distance. He looked lost and vulnerable…almost exactly like he had that first night after Abydos, when Jack had sat him down with a beer and they'd talked about Sha're and Sara and Stargates on other planets.

Maybe this new Daniel Jackson wasn't so different than the one Jack had known after all.

O'Neill felt a sudden rush of relief. He knew what to do with this, at least. Without a word, he reached out and rested his hand on Daniel's neck in a familiar gesture of comfort and support. That was all it took.

"Life's too short," Daniel choked out on a deeply felt sound resembling a laugh. His blue eyes came back to meet Jack's; they were shiny with suppressed moisture. He breathed out a long sigh. "Fifty _years_, Jack."

They both heard the unspoken end to that sentence. _Fifty years, and where were you?_

Jack looked away this time, but only to gather his thoughts; for once in his life he knew exactly what to say. His brown gaze came up to hold Daniel's steadily. "I'm retiring."

That had obviously not been the answer Daniel expected. "_What_?"

"The President had me over for dinner last week. Offered me a nice retirement package way above what the Air Force normally gives us old guys and an open invitation to lunch any time with him and the Mrs." His voice was deliberately casual as he relayed this information. He didn't say that he'd asked the President to consider letting him go to his well-earned civilian life. He left out the part where he threatened and blackmailed several high-ranking officials into letting him leave and he _completely _failed to mention that he'd had his resignation notice typed up and signed before Teal'c had even finished the words, "Time dilation field". He watched with evident satisfaction as Daniel did a bang-on impression of a goldfish.

Jack continued on before his friend had a chance to interrupt, his voice losing its light humor as he went. "I've been looking at some nice little places in Colorado Springs; I hear it's nice this time of year. Called Carter earlier today to see if she'd check out the market for me." There were so many double meanings to that last sentence that he didn't even try to emphasize one. He sat back and waited.

The smile took a long time to creep across Daniel's expression and get all the way into his eyes, but when it finally did it was blinding. "Really?"

O'Neill breathed a silent sigh of relief that he was off the hook in the explanation department…for a little while, at least. "Really." He put a solid hand on Daniel's shoulder and squeezed. "Life's too short for all this crap, Daniel."

Daniel beamed at him. It made every miserable moment of Jack's time in D.C. almost worth it. The archaeologist gave a soft laugh and shook his head in disbelief; he looked ten years younger than when he'd walked in. "Good things come to those who wait."

Jack smiled from ear to ear for the first time in months. "Yasureyabetcha," he drawled easily. He jostled Daniel companionably by putting an arm around the other man's shoulders for a second.

Jack had his best friend, a house near the Mountain waiting to be furnished and a whole lot of fishing time to look forward to.

The way he figured it, they'd all waited long enough.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Author's Note: Well, there you have it. I waited a good long time to post this, both to give everyone a chance to see the episode and because it was very, very hard to write. This is the only one that really diverts from canon (though to be fair, there's no after-show canon established in this area yet...). I hope you enjoyed it. Please tell me what you thought! Have no fear (or maybe fear greatly), more tags are coming!  
**

**Serpent's Lair is next. Any more requests now that we have ten set seasons to choose from? Let me know!**

**...And for those of you who caught the cliche's in this (I used every one that was said in the last scene), bravo. A thousand thanks to Ren for catching all the little things that I never do.  
**


	14. The Serpent's Lair

* * *

**The Serpent's Lair**

Daniel Jackson jerked awake as the car jolted to a stop. His eyes blinked open slowly to a watercolor world of blurred lights and darks. He forced himself to blink quickly, his hand coming up to adjust his glasses, only to find he wasn't wearing any.

The world finally came into focus, and Daniel realized where he was. And who he was with. He turned slowly, afraid he was still on that ship in that machine dreaming all of this. _Please_, he thought frantically, _Don't let this be another hallucination._

A soft voice brought him back to the real world. "Daniel?"

Jack's head was tilted a little, his brown eyes narrowed in concern. He was real. They were alive. Daniel couldn't even process it. "You OK?"

They both winced at the question, and O'Neill shook his head apologetically. "Right. Let's get you inside into a real bed, alright?"

The anthropologist stifled a huge yawn as he opened his car door and stepped out onto Jack's driveway, attempting to stretch out the cricks in his muscles. He was ridiculously glad that Jack hadn't just dropped him off at his dark, lonely apartment instead. "What time is it?"

The colonel scrubbed a hand through his hair and looked at the watch on his wrist. "…Late. Or really early." It took him a moment to find the right key on his chain. He fumbled in the dim light to unlock his door. "C'mon, we can make up the guest bed for ya." He stepped inside and flicked on the lights, heading for the kitchen. "Hammond throws a heck of a party, huh?"

Daniel flopped onto the couch without bothering to take his shoes or even his jacket off. "Yeah. I guess we deserved it, right? You don't save the whole planet every day."

Jack leaned into the doorway to shoot him an incredulous look. "Daniel, have you paid _any _attention to the last year of your life?"

The younger man chuckled weakly and managed to sit up a little. His gaze focused absently on an old picture of Jack with his son on the far mantle. He well remembered the first time he'd seen it, when Jack had told him about Sara leaving and they'd still been reeling from the losses of Sha're and Skaara. It seemed like a century ago; had it really only been a year? Just a year of the planet-hopping, the crazy hours, the friendship, the death-defying feats and discoveries?

No, it had been _two _years, really-- for him and Jack, at least. It seemed like a lifetime ago since he'd set foot on Abydos that first time. They'd come far since then in some ways, and not at all in others. Daniel took a second to appreciate that regardless of what they did, they still always managed to end up in this living room again.

He blinked and returned to the present as Jack sat next to him on the couch. The older man sighed tiredly and rubbed a hand over his face. "Some day."

Daniel huffed out something that wasn't quite a laugh and sank back into the couch; his head tipped backwards to look at the ceiling like it was suddenly too heavy for his neck. "I wouldn't mind never doing that again."

"Yeah," O'Neill agreed softly. There was something in his voice—a somber, charged stillness that hadn't been there a moment ago—that caused Daniel to look up and find his friend sitting with his arms propped up on the knees, one hand trying to massage the obvious headache away. "...It wasn't _fair_."

The anthropologist's brow wrinkled. "What?"

The colonel shook his head, then repeated more clearly "It wasn't fair."

"What wasn't?"

"That we got rescued! I leave you to the freakin' Goa'uld and their exploding ship with a hole in your shoulder and then I get a shuttle! How the heck does that work?"

The sudden outburst made Daniel sit up and gaze at his distraught friend with new appreciation. He spoke soothingly, as if to a child. "It's not your fault, Jack. I would've slowed you down."

"I left you to _die, _Daniel."

A kind of deep coldness seemed to permeate Daniel's bones. He wished that Jack hadn't said it aloud, the word that carried the weight of guilt and accusation for both of them; wished they'd never talked about it. He hadn't realized. It had been easy for him to suggest abandonment, even to accept it as he felt the blood leaking out of him onto the floor. He was only now starting to realize how hard it must have been for Jack to actually _do _it.

Jack left him to die. The words felt heavy in his brain.

Amazingly enough, though, that wasn't the part of their day that Daniel had a problem with. He _hadn't_ died. The worst part was when he'd been told that everyone else had.

"For a while, I almost wished I had," he admitted softly. Jack looked up in surprise, but Daniel missed it because he was staring off into space. "I got back to the SGC and you weren't there. I couldn't believe that after all of that..." he shook his head helplessly. "I thought I was the last one, Jack. I didn't...I don't know what I would have done if the rest of you were dead." The ice in his bones thawed even as he said it; it was OK. They were alive. He looked back to the silent man beside him. "So _I'm_ glad that you got that shuttle, Jack. Because without it-" He let the sentence linger, the horror of that afternoon still too fresh in his mind.

The colonel stared at him. He hadn't thought of that. He sank back onto the couch, now fully appreciating the situation as his guilt more or less doubled. Maybe tripled. His shoulders slumped a little with the metaphorical weight of it all. He'd left Daniel _twice, _ and even though it all worked out it still hurt him like a physical weight to think about it.

Jack gave a heavy sigh that hung in the somber silence like a ghost before it dissipated. "Crap, Daniel, I'm sorry."

"Me too," the younger man said with an attempt at a smile. At Jack's silent question, he clarified, "For getting shot. For making you guys do all that thinking I was dead."

Jack's hand came to rest on his shoulder. His words were light, but his tone was serious as he sad, "Apology accepted. Just don't ever do it again and we'll pretend it never happened."

Daniel smiled weakly, the expression aborted halfway through to make way for a huge yawn. He ended up leaning against Jack's side by the end of it, his eyelids starting to droop from exhaustion. "We're alive," he informed Jack blearily.

O'Neill looked down at his friend's head and smiled softly despite himself. They were alive. The world was saved, they had time off to goof around, they got lunch with the president, and they were _alive_.

"Yeah," Jack agreed softly. He could tell Daniel was already asleep from the rhythm of his breathing, and with a long sigh he let himself relax into the sofa cushions, his friend still propped against him. "Good day."

* * *

**Author's Note: I'm baaack! I'm sorry for the hiatus (or whatever the heck that was), but I can now say with some certainty that posting will resume. If you have mentioned an episode in a review, it is being written. I have a list of about fifteen eps that all have at least something written in them. Please, give me more! As long as you request, I will write. As always, Ren is my writing salvation--particularly in this piece, because without her help in adding some very important details to this conversation, it wouldn't have been as emotionally fulfilling for the characters (or us!). **

**As always, tell me how you think I did. Cheers!  
**


	15. Scorched Earth

**Scorched Earth**

Of all the fights, the misunderstandings, the _royal_ screw-ups in their relationship to date, Jack had to admit that this one with Lotan and the Enkarans was the worst he and Daniel had ever managed. It was so bad that it actually stopped the two of them speaking for whole days at a time. The team nights and late dinners and easy talks didn't just gradually dry up—they stopped, cold turkey, like they'd never existed. They simply stopped acknowledging each other, and Carter and Teal'c gave up on engaging them in awkward small talk after the first week or so. So they all ended up at a silent impasse. Jack had been amazed to discover that it was possible for he and Daniel to go for a week straight without seeing each other outside of briefings and missions, not even in the hallways or in the mess.

It wore him down, made him feel tired, and a month after P5S-381 Jack was willing to admit to himself that _he missed his team. _Maybe more to point, he missed _Daniel. _

He wasn't sure how to stop it, or even if he wanted to. It was like there was this huge hole between them that couldn't be crossed or patched up (it wasn't his _fault_, for crying out loud, except it was, and it was probably Daniel's too).

Everyone had noticed the break between the previously inseparable men—how could they _not?--_and so Jack wasn't really surprised when Carter showed up at his door one Saturday afternoon with a look on her face that said, "We need to talk." He knew that Hammond had sent her. Jack was a good two weeks past the point of being annoyed by the intervention. He'd missed having people in the house again. He let her in.

"Coffee?" he called as he walked in towards the kitchen.

"Yeah, thanks." Carter paused just inside the door, a split second of hesitation that anyone but O'Neill would have missed. But then she got over it and followed him, and he was suddenly reminded just why she was on his team. They were silent until they were both sitting at his kitchen table, staring into their mugs. Finally, Sam looked up and sighed, "Sir..."

He took a long sip of coffee before giving a sigh of his own. "Yeah, Carter. I know."

"With all due respect, sir, I don't think you do."

That made him look up in surprise in time to see her wince apologetically. "Oh?" He said carefully.

"He's really torn up about this," she told him.

Jack made a noise that was somewhere between scorn and sympathy—a combination that had taken him years to perfect. "It was a bad situation," he said softly, and he knew that Carter knew that was as close to an admission of guilt as he was going to get.

Sam gave him a look, and O'Neill was quite suddenly reminded that _she _had hated him for a good week after they got back, too. She'd had every right to, even if he hadn't really been wrong in the first place, and that was why this whole thing sucked._ "_For all of us," he amended, and her eyes softened at his almost-apology.

She took a deep breath and the colonel sat back, sensing that she was about to say what she'd come to say. "Sir..." she shook her head and looked down again.

Something unhappy twisted in O'Neill's stomach. "Just spit it out, Carter."

She looked up at that and held his gaze steadily. "Daniel's talking about leaving the team."

Jack's eyes widened and he let the world spin out of focus for a second. He tried and failed to imagine SG-1 without Daniel and felt a little sick. Except he'd already had to do that; he'd made the choice to take Daniel off the team by _killing _him, a month ago on that planet. He groaned and let his head fall to the table with a _thump_. "Ah, crap."

"I wouldn't have said anything, because I thought he was just ranting, but then Teal'c mentioned it too, and..." she trailed off helplessly.

_And I'm his best friend and I take care of things like this, _he finished silently. _Except this time I can't. _Jack wondered if any of them besides him remembered that he'd practically _blown Daniel up _on that little mission. He'd pushed the button, made the choice to off his best friend because it was what he had to. The colonel's stomach churned a little. He brought his hands up to rub his face, shaking his head. "I screwed up, Carter."

She spoke softly, "We all did, Sir."

He caught her eye and nodded slowly, appreciating that forgiveness more than he was willing to admit. Jack took a deep breath and let it out, accepting the facts of the situation. There was a problem with his team, and Jack had an obligation to fix it. He probably couldn't, but it was _Daniel_, so he had to try. He always tried when it was Daniel—sometime over the past five years or so, it had become his default setting. "Where is he?"

She looked away guiltily, and Jack's tactical mind made a few quick connections. His eyes narrowed. "Sam."

Two seconds later, a car pulled up in the driveway, and she gave him a really horrible attempt at an innocent smile. "Oh, look. Teal'c's here!"

He raised an eyebrow at her, not deigning that with a response.

Carter didn't even try for subtle this time. She stood from the table and patted him on the shoulder. "Just...try, sir."

She headed for the door and Jack reluctantly followed, just in time to hear Daniel's indignant voice. "Wait, why is Sam's—Teal'c!"

"Did you not say that you wish to reconcile with O'Neill, DanielJackson?"

"This isn't what I--" And then the archaeologist was literally pushed through Jack's front door. He leveled a death glare at Sam, but she ignored it, kissed his cheek, and went to the door.

"MajorCarter," Teal'c greeted her cordially. "Were you successful?"

"We'll see," she mouthed.

The Jaffa looked over her shoulder and bowed his head to Jack. "O'Neill."

Jack gave him a wave with as much unhappiness in it as he could muster. Then Sam shut the door on their (admittedly well-executed) intervention, and suddenly it was just him and Daniel and a huge, gaping, awkward silence that threatened to chew him into tiny little bits and grind him into the carpet.

This was _such _a bad idea.

He heaved a heavy sigh and turned back to the kitchen. "We deserve that?"

"Probably."

"Coffee?"

Daniel let out a long breath, and Jack saw his shoulders slump under his jacket. "Yeah, why not."

They sat at the table, Daniel in Sam's vacated chair, her rinsed out and refilled mug in his hands. Daniel still had his coat on, like he was ready to get up and leave at any minute.

Jack looked at him, saw the tension in his shoulders and the rings around his eyes, and felt a sudden pang. Daniel hadn't been sleeping well, and O'Neill hadn't even noticed until now. He felt like he was looking at a stranger. Could one month make so much difference?

_Not just a month, _a mean little voice inside his head reminded him. _Just the couple seconds it took to push that button and blow that ship up with him on it._

Some best friends they'd turned out to be. He was just so _tired_ of this. "Look, Daniel..."

"I know," the anthropologist said softly. Somehow, O'Neill doubted he did, but he didn't interrupt. "What happened to us, Jack?"

"I don't know," Jack said honestly. It wasn't just about Lotan or Enkarans anymore. It was about a whole _bundle _of things they'd always ignored until now—he was military and Daniel wasn't; he took orders, Daniel questioned them; he accepted casualties, Daniel refused to allow them.

Jack pushed buttons and made the decision to blow friends up because he thought it was his only choice. Daniel ignored orders and willingly put himself in the line of fire to reach compromises for the same reason.

Maybe Jack had accepted one casualty too many, this time. Because looking at Daniel now, he realized with a sudden kind of sick clarity that if he'd killed Daniel, he might as well have killed himself.

This one wasn't a sacrifice he would have been able to live with later.

And the worst part was, Jack had no idea how to say any of it. So instead he cocked his head at Daniel and said casually, "So, Carter says you're leaving the team."

The younger man looked up, eyes round with surprise. "No! I said I was _thinking _about finding a...a new way to contribute."

Jack raised his eyebrows, looking at Daniel over the rim of his mug. Yeah—a new way to contribute that didn't involve getting _killed by your team leader_. "Oh?"

Daniel made a frustrated noise and stood suddenly. "I don't _know, _Jack."

The colonel watched him with cautious eyes. "...Don't know what, Daniel?"

The archaeologist shook his head helplessly, coming to a halt in front of the kitchen sink with his back to Jack. "...Anything, it seems like. Why I'm not angry any more. Why I ever was in the first place..."

Jack knew the feeling. He stood hesitantly, staying carefully on his side of the small kitchen. "Look, I..." he cleared his throat uncomfortably, "I'm really bad at this."

"Yes you are," Daniel agreed softly without turning around. The resignation in his voice rubbed one too many raw nerves.

Something inside Jack snapped, and he was up and shouting before he realized it. "For cryin' out loud, Daniel!_What was I supposed to do?_" He hated the defensive note in his own voice, made an attempt to gentle it and failed immediately. "You knew I had to blow that ship up! What did you _think_ you were doing going up there? You didn't leave me a choice!"

"There's always a choice, Jack! You should have given me a chance!"

"I did!" O'Neill reminded him, taking a step forward so they were eye to eye. "And then when things didn't work out the way you wanted, you went with Lotan without telling me!"

There was a long moment of silence where Daniel just stared at him with his _I just had a revelation _look. "...You really thought you were killing me when you decided to blow the ship up."

Jack stared back at him, resisting the sudden almost overwhelming urge to punch him. "What else was I supposed to think? I didn't know where you were, except that Teal'c said you'd transported up!_" _He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, deflating slowly. "I didn't have a choice. It wasn't my _fault_, Daniel." He knew it was a lie even as he said it, even though he also knew it was the truth, too. "_..._Except it was."

Then the anger came right back in again and he yelled, "And unless I'm remembering things wrong, it was _your fault too, _you idiot! You should have followed orders!"

"You should have _trusted _me!" Daniel shouted back, whirling to face him.

"You shouldn't have made me choose between keeping you alive and doing my job!"

The room rang silent for a beat. Finally, Daniel closed his eyes, and when they opened again they were free of anger for the first time in a month. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "I didn't think about it."

Jack sat heavily in his chair and gave a long, tired sigh. "Yeah, well, Daniel, you never do. And that's pretty much the problem."

"It worked out, Jack." O'Neill wasn't sure which one of them he was trying to reassure.

"This time," Jack said darkly. "What happens next time we do this and you're _not _off the ship when I hit the button?"

There was no good answer to that, and they both knew it. After a long moment, Daniel came back over and sat as well. They were at something a lot like an impasse. "So what now?" O'Neill asked quietly after an unbearably silent minute.

Daniel's head rolled on his neck to give the other man a searching look. "Do you want me on the team?"

"It's not SG-1 without you," Jack answered without hesitation. _For better or worse, _he finished silently.

He had a feeling that the other man heard it anyway as little smile flitted across Daniel's face. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," he confirmed. "You're...Daniel, you're our conscience. _My _conscience. Possibly the only one I have. I don't want to go off-world without you on my six. But I can't afford to have you running around getting killed...or almost killed...every time we disagree." And he'd never repeat any of that to anyone ever again.

Daniel looked at him a long time, then hazarded, "...I'll at least call and check in next time?"

Despite himself, Jack felt a weight lift, even as a touch of unease drifted across his mind at the thought of doing this all over again. "It's been...weird. Without you around. And Teal'c and Carter have already told you the same thing."

"Actually, Teal'c just said, 'I consider you an irreplaceable teammate, DanielJackson.'"

O'Neill was the one to grin this time. "Yeah, well, what he said."

Daniel looked at him for a long time and said what they were both thinking. "Jack, this won't be the last time this happens."

Insurmountable differences.

The job or Daniel. Duty or family. He didn't know if he'd _ever _be able to choose between them, not with the ease he'd been able to do before. Jack decided all at once that he couldn't care less right this minute with Daniel in front of him. "I know," he said evenly. And then he broke down and said, "I might have...missed you. A little."

Daniel smiled, and this time it was the genuine article. "I know."

"You _know_?" Jack cried in mock outrage. "That's all I get?"

"I...might have missed you too. A little."

They smiled at each other stupidly, and suddenly they were just two friends having coffee on a Saturday afternoon in Jack's kitchen just like they'd done a hundred other times.

"Refill?" Jack asked. It was a loaded question.

"Sure," Daniel said easily. They both knew it was more than coffee he'd accepted. He took off his jacket and settled in. "So, did you hear about the new gate tech that's got a crush on Sam?"

Jack handed him the sugar bowl and sat down, relief washing out his higher brain functions. "Another one? Has Teal'c threatened him yet?"

They hadn't really changed anything, Jack knew. They'd just put off the inevitable, postponed the day when those insurmountable difference popped up again to make life hell for them.

But they were _them _again, and Jack had a sudden and deep understanding that nothing was more important than that.

So he ordered pizza. They'd deal with those differences another day.

* * *

**Author's Note: Yeah, this one was rather long, and it didn't have the tone most of the rest of this series does. Everyone knows that Scorched Earth is a real tough one for the Jack/Daniel relationship, and let me tell you, it is hard to come to terms with for a tag. Thanks to Ren, who gave me some much-needed pointers. Tell me how you think it went! Lost City and Crystal Skull are up next. Cheers!**


	16. Lost City

**Lost City**

The first time Rodney McKay met Daniel Jackson, they were in Antarctica and the archaeologist was standing in front of a stasis pod. McKay didn't need to ask why. That stasis pod was the reason he was here, after all—someone had finally recognized that he really _was _the world's foremost expert in Ancient technology. McKay was still half-amazed that Sam Carter wasn't here herself, but he wasn't about to look a gift reassignment in the mouth, as it were. So, instead of freezing his poor genius brain out of his skull in a dinky lab in Siberia, he was now doing it _eighteen miles south of McMurdo, _which was _oh _so much better.

Still, it was Ancient technology, and there might even be a lost city in the bargain, so he wasn't about to pass it up. The control chair alone was the find of a lifetime.

He was ready to say something to that effect by way of greeting, but he pulled up short at the last moment, mouth half-open. Even Rodney could feel the somber waves radiating off the individual in front of him. He felt like he was walking in on a conversation, even though Jackson was silent. There was a moroseness about the room that he understood only all too well. In a fit of unusual silence, the scientist took a single step into the room, just enough to see the lone figure frozen in the Ancient's "sleep machine".

A shudder ran down his spine.

This wasn't the Colonel Jack O'Neill he remembered. There was no humor in the eyes, no condescending smirk present at all. Evident now was a kind of wisdom that seemed cold and alien and _Ancient_ on a man that Rodney remembered being far more human.

Despite himself, McKay felt a pang of something like sadness at the sight. Even if O'Neill_ had_ been the one to suggest shipping him off to Siberia (there was no proof of that, but somehow he just knew it was true), he'd also been amusing at times, and just about the only American military man McKay had met that had a sense of sarcasm that rivaled his own.

This colonel looked like he'd gotten frozen halfway through a goodbye to his closest friends.

Something in the bottom of Rodney's stomach flipped a little as he realized that in all likelihood, that was _exactly _why O'Neill had that look on his face. The colonel was looking directly at Jackson—or rather, Jackson was apparently standing in the exact same place he had been when the pod had first sealed O'Neill in. McKay remembered reading that Jackson had been forced to translate for O'Neill as the colonel slowly succumbed to the information downloaded into his head, and he wondered if O'Neill's last words had been communicated in the same way, maybe right in this very room.

He couldn't help thinking that _this _was what a friend was supposed to be: someone that not only stood right by you when you practically died, but kept standing there anyway, even three weeks after the fact.

_As if you'd know what having friends is like_, a little voice inside him said.

Sometimes he hated it when he was right. He must have shifted on his feet or made a noise, because suddenly Jackson turned, eyebrows raised. "Hi."

Somehow, after all the stories he'd heard about him, McKay had expected the archaeologist to be...well, taller. Or possibly glowing slightly. Rodney raised a hand in an awkward wave. "Hi. You, uh—you must be Doctor Jackson."

The archaeologist blinked politely, hands still in his pockets. "Yeah. And you would be...?"

McKay was momentarily shocked, until he remembered that both times he'd been at the SGC, Jackson had either been in Russia or actually dead—or Ascended, if those highly philosophical, mystic mumbo-jumbo reports could be believed. And despite Rodney's evident genius, Sam Carter had apparently failed to ever mention him to her friends (the jealous, petty woman). Rodney cleared his throat and held out a hand.

"Oh! Uh, McKay. Rodney McKay. _Doctor _Rodney McKay, actually, with a double on the...doctor..." He realized rather belatedly that Jackson was only paying half attention; the anthropologist's gaze had drifted back to O'Neill again. McKay chose not to take it personally, for once.

Daniel looked back in time to take the other man's hand and give it a firm if brief shake. "Oh, right. Sam told me about you."

McKay couldn't help a triumphant grin at that. "She did? I mean, of course she did, why wouldn't she. What'd she say, exactly?"

Jackson politely ignored that, though Rodney got the feeling that in other cases the man probably would have mocked him. "So you're the expert, huh?"

"Mmm," the scientist agreed absently, his attention already diverted to the stasis chamber. He walked over to it, running a hand along its side thoughtfully as he took in its basic structure, trying his best to ignore the constant frozen-sad gaze of O'Neill just a few inches away.

Several minutes later, he belatedly realized that Jackson was still standing there. Even more belatedly, he realized he'd probably just interrupted an extremely personal moment. Characteristically, he didn't particularly care. There was a reason he worked better alone; not just because he was smarter than everyone else, but because he just sucked with people. "Shouldn't you be...ah...translating something?"

That earned him an ironic look that he figured he probably deserved. "Elizabeth thought we'd have the best chance of figuring out how to fix this if we both worked on it."

"Elizabeth?" Rodney was momentarily confused by the name (he'd only been here three hours, after all) until he remembered. "Oh yes, right, Doctor Weir." There was a long silence that quickly turned awkward. McKay cleared his throat and clapped his hands together. "Right then. Uh, shall we?"

The other man had zoned out again, his gaze returned to O'Neill's frozen form. After a second of uncomfortable staring on McKay's part, Jackson blinked and turned back. "Yeah. Right."

`For some reason that he would never be able explain to anyone, not even himself, Rodney paused for half a second as Jackson turned towards the work station in the corner. "So...you two were close, huh?" He winced as soon as the words came out; he'd always sucked at personal stuff, and he never realized he'd stuck his foot in his mouth until it was too late. It was one of the symptoms of being a certifiable genius.

But the anthropologist didn't seem offended; on the contrary, he seemed to be looking at Rodney with new eyes. After a moment, he gave a long sigh, and the sound was tired, even to McKay's ears. "Yeah. Well, we've been through a lot together."

"Mmm," the scientist agreed, already regretting broaching the subject to begin with. "Yes, well, defying death on a regular basis would build a certain understanding, I suppose." Something else struck him suddenly. "Hey, you two were the first ones through the Stargate."

An odd expression flitted across Jackson's face: it was equal parts sadness, fondness, and something else that Rodney couldn't quite catch. "Well actually, Earnest Littlefield went through in the 1940's. But we were the first ones to meet people, yeah. I spent most of the time chasing papers across sand dunes and getting married while Jack made friends with a bunch of kids and almost blew us all up."

Rodney looked back at O'Neill, and then at Jackson with new appreciation, suddenly aware of the history he was standing with.

Even someone as averse to the soft sciences as McKay had to appreciate the effort these two had put into the Stargate program. Still, as Jackson's gaze returned yet again to the stasis pod, Rodney couldn't help thinking that at the moment, Daniel probably cared more about getting his friend unfrozen than making more history. "You guys have been friends all this time?" He couldn't imagine.

Daniel gave O'Neill's form a look that answered even before his mouth did. "Pretty much the best I could ask for, most days."

Well, there was no accounting for taste. From what he'd seen of the two of them, he couldn't imagine how they ever got along.

He cleared his throat again. "So, shall we..." he gestured to the work station helpfully.

"Yeah," Jackson agreed, at long last turning his full attention to the problem at hand. "I've already translated most of the symbols around the entrance, but I haven't found anything that looks like an instruction manual yet. Still, there are some fascinating references to some kind of city, much bigger than this one, that we were actually looking for to begin with..."

As Rodney bent over the laptop Daniel was gesturing over, he caught O'Neill's gaze over the archaeologist's shoulder.

He knew that it was his imagination, but for a split second he could have almost sworn that he saw the colonel's eyes twinkle.

He turned back to Jackson to find the other man watching him with concern. "Doctor McKay?"

"Oh, sorry." Rodney hesitated a second before extending the proverbial olive branch. "Uh, Rodney."

The other man smiled for the first time, and McKay found himself more at ease in that one moment than he'd been in years. "Daniel."

Rodney couldn't help but hope that one day, he would find the kind of friend that O'Neill had standing right here, almost eight years after they'd met.

...Well, as long as that friend was also a genius in the hard sciences who didn't impede his ultra-important research, anyway. And preferably Sam Carter-level hot.

They had to be out there somewhere.

For now, he'd get O'Neill out of that pod so he could get on to the actually important things he had waiting for him. Some priorities were just more important than others.

* * *

**Author's Note: For those of you who don't watch Atlantis...well, do. If you haven't, I apologize for McKay, but he really is like that :P I actually intended to post Crystal Skull before this, but this just got finished faster; that one will be out before the end of the month, real life permitting. In the mean time, drop me a line and tell me how I did! I enjoyed writing this one, both because McKay's perspective is enjoyable (especially to us Atlantis fans, in which case a lot of his thoughts here are kind of ironic), and also because there aren't enough fics that span this time period between the end of 7 and the start of 8. Thanks to everyone who continues to read and review this series, and thanks also to new readers! This little set of one-shots has evolved into a series spanning over two years, with over 18,000 readers (with no end in sight)! And of course thanks to Ren, whose advice and beta-work is always appreciated, and badly needed. Cheers!**


	17. Crystal Skull

**Crystal Skull**

For the first time in _ever_, Daniel beat Jack to the punch. Or rather, to the offer of conciliatory liquor. As he laced up his street shoes in the locker room, the anthropologist looked up at his friend and asked, "Want a beer?" like it had been _Jack's_ last known relative that had just walked out on him.

"Yeah," O'Neill answered simply, and they went to O'Malley's. His friend was completely silent the entire way there, and Jack got the feeling that he was still processing things, trying to put thoughts into order. Still, the silence disconcerted O'Neill, more than just a little, and he had the sneaking suspicion that if Daniel kept this tight-lipped thing up, he wouldn't be able to handle this on his own.

He waited until Daniel was in the restroom before he yanked out his cellphone. "Backup," he muttered to himself. He hit the speed dial for Carter's home number without thinking about it and had to wait five rings before she picked up.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Carter."

Because she was a genius, she got right to the point he hadn't even made yet. "How is he, sir?" he could hear the concern in her voice and figured it was probably justified.

He blew out a breath and ran his hand through his hair. "Heck if I know. It looks like he's actually dealing with it, at least."

"Then why did you call?"

The question threw Jack for a second; he couldn't figure out if he was shocked that she even had to ask, or just confused because he didn't actually _know_ why. "I dunno," he finally admitted. "Look, just...he needs his team, okay?" _And so do I_, he absolutely didn't say. "We're at O'Malley's. C'mon, Carter, you know I suck at all this touchy-feely stuff."

Her voice was warm when she said, "You're better at it than you think, sir. I'll pick up Teal'c and we can get there for dinner. How's an hour sound?"

"Thanks, Carter." He was a little embarrassed at how not-flippant his gratitude came out sounding, and he hung up without waiting for a response. He could last an hour of depressing Daniel silence if he had to.

But by the time Daniel came back and they got drinks and sat at the bar, his friend had apparently shifted to a more conversational mood. They made a little small-talk that seemed awkward and stilted (mostly because it was). It wasn't until their second round that Daniel raised his glass soberly. "To Nick."

"To Nick," Jack agreed, tapping their glasses together before taking a long drink. After a moment, he broached the subject. "You know, you could have mentioned at some point that you _have _ a grandfather."

Daniel snorted into his drink. "Yeah, and then what? 'Oh, by the way, he's insane?'"

O'Neill looked around once to make sure no one was within direct hearing range before leaning forward. "Daniel, I _go to other planets _for my day job. One old guy who hears voices in his head isn't so bad. Besides, you know I care about that...family...stuff."

The younger man raised an expressive eyebrow in response.

Jack sighed heavily, willing to concede the point on grounds of his regular and insistent refusal to talk about feelings of any kind. "Alright, fine." He took a long sip of beer. "So tell me anyway."

Daniel let out a breath, eyebrows raised. "Oh, there's not much to tell, really." Jack gave him a look. The anthropologist considered the amber liquid in his glass for a couple of long, silent minutes, his eyes focused on memory lane somewhere. Finally he sighed, his eyes coming up to meet Jack's only briefly before taking a pull of his drink. "My parents died when I was eight. You know that whole..." he waved absently, and O'Neill nodded in a silent agreement to skip the details. He didn't want to have to think about that any more than Daniel did.

The younger man nodded thoughtfully. "Well, they had a grave-side funeral, which I was really too young to get. Did I ever tell you it was the week before their anniversary?" Jack shook his head silently, at a loss for responses. Fortunately Daniel didn't need prompting as he continued, "I have no idea who I stayed with before... I think it was a friend of theirs from the museum. It's funny, the things you forget. I probably never even thanked them."

He looked out the window, and Jack wondered if his friend even remembered that he was talking to someone anymore. "It rained. I didn't know anyone there, not even the priest. There must have been two hundred people standing out there getting soaked and I didn't know any of them. I still talked in a dialect of Arabic half the time because we'd spent that last year at a dig outside Cairo." He gave a little smile, the one Jack had come to recognize as the one eight-year-old Danny must have given his parents. "...Nick was the only one I knew. He showed up halfway through the service with a suitcase. I guess he'd just gotten off a plane. I think he told me later that he'd been in Brazil."

Jack could almost see it: a tiny Daniel, lost in a see of mourning strangers, only for old Nick to come riding in on a shining horse, Indiana Jones style. Except it couldn't have gone that well, because Jack knew for a fact that after that funeral, Daniel had been in foster care until he got to college.

He almost didn't prod his friend to continue, but his curiosity got the better of him. Besides, he had the feeling that Daniel needed to do this, and he knew better than to think Daniel would ever start again if he stopped now. "So then what?"

"He took me to get waffles," he said, and there was fondness on his face despite the apparently painful memories. "It was this little diner in the middle of nowhere. I don't even think he meant to stop there. But right after the funeral, he just put me in his car and we drove until we finally had to stop somewhere. And then he bought me waffles, and he told me all about the dig he'd just been on. I think it was his way of saying sorry."

Jack tilted his head a little. "Sorry for what?" He caught the bartender's eye and silently signaled for refills.

Daniel waited until his glass was full again before answering, "I think he'd just realized that he wasn't going to adopt me. My parents' will said that he was supposed to, if something happened to them. But he was traveling the world. I knew there was no way he could bring a little kid along."

"His loss," Jack said firmly.

The other man looked up in surprise, like he didn't exactly believe that O'Neill could be sincere until their eyes met. When Jack held his gaze, Daniel smiled for real, but it was with that little-boy-lost expression again and for a split second his demeanor reminded Jack so much of Charlie that he actually felt queasy. For some reason, his son had been on Jack's mind even more than normal lately, ever since Nick showed up.

_Maybe it's because that look on Daniel's face could've been Charlie, _a little voice inside him said. _You always wondered, before he died, what would happen to him if you got killed somewhere. _Jack actively ignored the voice, because it was all just theoretical now; but he couldn't help thinking that he'd always known that Sara would've been with Charlie, no matter what. He wondered, now, if Daniel's parents hadn't thought the same thing about Nick.

All at once, he felt a kind of empathy with the long-dead Jacksons. They'd lost their son, just like he had; the semantics were just a little different. And now he looked at the man next to him with new eyes. Jack had lost his son. Daniel had lost his parents. In some twisted way, Jack wondered if understanding that experience, albeit from different ends, was part of the reason they clicked so well. It wasn't a thought he wanted to dwell on.

Apparently his thoughts had gone on a little too long, because he resurfaced to find Daniel watching him worriedly. "Jack?"

The colonel shook his head and deliberately cleared away the cobwebs. Man, that had gotten _way _deeper into the darker corners of his mind than he'd been ready to deal with. He managed a little grin and covered with, "Sorry. Was trying to imagine you carting around after Nick in a little Indiana Jones hat." The somber mood of the conversation thus far was suddenly stifling to him, and he took a long drink of beer. "So," he continued much more cheerfully, "you spent the next seventeen years awing and amazing foster parents, and then next thing you know you end up talking to an empty lecture hall."

He realized a moment too late that that was probably a little harsh, but to his relief Daniel actually laughed a little and took a drink of his own. "Yeah," he said wistfully. "How time flies." He shook his head once as he set his drink down with a heavy _clink. _"There's not much more to say about Nick, honestly. He followed my academic career, but then he started talking about the Giant Aliens," and Jack could absolutely hear the capital letters in his voice, "and then I started on the pyramids, and...well, we kind of drifted apart."

Jack nodded in understanding, and then out of the corner of his eye, he saw Carter's car pulling into the lot outside. Realizing that their moment was just about over, he returned his gaze to Daniel and said, with all seriousness, "He's proud of you, Daniel. And I don't doubt your parents are too."

The direct and deliberate emotion in the statement made Daniel stare at him with amazed eyes for a moment. But then, at last, the younger man relaxed, and the hesitant smile he gave was entirely his own. "Thanks, Jack."

"Hey, any time." Jack clapped him on the shoulder, which caused him to awkwardly balance his drink to keep from spilling it. Mood officially broken, the anthropologist glared at his friend just as Sam and Teal'c came in the door. Jack flagged them down and they came over, Sam's expression questioning behind Daniel's back. O'Neill offered a shrug and an expression that said, _Hey, I tried._

Then Daniel stood to greet their teammates, and his face was clear of most of the sadness that had weighed it down since Nick left. "Sam! Teal'c!" he said enthusiastically. He returned Carter's hug and let Teal'c give him a rare squeeze on the shoulder. It looked like that, despite all odds, talking with Jack had actually made him feel better. O'Neill smiled widely because he knew Daniel wouldn't see it. Maybe he wasn't so bad at this touchy-feely stuff after all.

...Maybe. His eyes fell to the empty beer glasses on the bar, and then he caught Teal'c's knowing look, and remembered the smile in Sam's voice, and for the first time he wondered if the offer to come drinking in the first place hadn't been more for his sake than Daniel's.

These people knew him too well. It didn't bother him nearly as much as it should have. He signaled for more drinks: a beer for Carter, and a cranberry juice for T. When they all had their glasses, he raised his ceremoniously. "To Nick," he said. "May he learn about all kinds of planet-saving things in the course of his cultural exchange with the Giant Aliens."

"Here here," Daniel agreed with a grin, tapping his glass to Jack's. Their eyes met for a moment and Jack felt the new level of understanding between them.

And then, because he was Jack O'Neill, he shook off whatever remnants of seriousness he still had and clapped Teal'c on the shoulder. "C'mon, I'm starving here!" And because they were his team, they followed him and went to dinner.

* * *

**Author's Note: So, here it is! Tell me how you think I did; an introspective Jack is slightly hard to balance, but piecing together a bit of Daniel backstory was a lot of fun. The Shroud will be next, followed by (dun dun dunnnnn) Meridian! Yikes. As always, your reading time is valued, and so are your comments!**


	18. The Shroud

**The Shroud**

As stupid as it was, when the Odyssey finally landed back on home soil after SG-1's most recent galaxy-saving venture, Jack just didn't have time to stay.

It was becoming the story of his life these days: a life defined by the duties that filled up the small boxes of the days on his calendar. Duties that he acted out in his box of an office, where he turned the real work of SGC teams into bullet points for other people to read. Of course, these hours of monotony were interspersed with the times when he went back to the apartment he jokingly called "home" and stared at the cardboard boxes yet to be unpacked even after a year of sitting there.

A life of boxes in boxes in other boxes. It was like the Doctor Seuss book from hell. He remembered a time when he would have shot himself before he'd consider turning into...into whatever he was now. The SGC's Box Man: the lone beacon for truth, justice and the galactic way amidst the paperwork of the Pentagon.

This was a familiar path for his thoughts to take these days, and his mind wandered the well-worn diatribe in increasingly more bitter circles. But despite his attitude, the general felt the constrictions around him strongly. Jack O'Neill, former commander of SG-1, Goa'uld buster extraordinare, scourge of the Replicators, defender of the freakin' _planet_, was well and firmly _boxed in_.

And so he stayed at the SGC just long enough to debrief with Landry and Woolsey, wish Daniel a safe recovery, clap Teal'c on the shoulder and make a dash for the airport so he could hit DC in time for his nine o'clock with the joint chiefs the next morning.

He hadn't even been able to stay for dinner. Jack found himself physically unable to meet Carter's gaze as he popped by her lab to say goodbye. He didn't want to see the disappointment he knew would be there. In retrospect, his breezy farewell probably hadn't helped much. He could still feel the glare that Vala had given his retreating back like a laser beam between his shoulder blades.

Even as he boarded the HWS jet back to DC, Jack felt a pang of guilt at leaving SG-1 to deal with the mess of Daniel's re-humanization without him. But he just couldn't do it.

...Well. _Maybe _he couldn't. It would've taken rescheduling his entire week. And then rescheduling his entire month to make up for that one rescheduled week. At some point, he'd ceased to see that as an option because he just couldn't find the energy for it.

_Be honest, O'Neill, _his conscience rebuked him as the plane lifted off. He winced a little and shifted in his seat. Alright. Fine. He could have rearranged his schedule. What he _really _couldn't find the energy to deal with was staying another week in Colorado as _the one that left the team_.

Because _they_ were the team now, and he was starting to get that. Daniel didn't need him to cope—he had Carter and Teal'c, and even Mitchell. And Vala, who was on this whole other level with Daniel that O'Neill didn't even get. The woman scared him in a fundamental way that he couldn't fully articulate, which was probably why Daniel liked her.

Jack had gotten so used to being in the loop for the past eight years that spending even a few days outside it looking in from a few feet away was more than he could handle. The space he thought he'd gained from his year in Washington had evaporated in the presence of his team (_family_) in about six seconds. Which made the whole thing worse, really. It hurt on some level Jack hadn't been aware of before to realize that he wasn't SG-1 anymore.

Jack gave a frustrated sigh, aware that he was only making himself miserable. Still, he dwelt on it for the rest of his flight. When the plane finally bumped to a halt on the DC runway, he had worked himself into a fine dark mood. He snapped at the airman who'd piloted him before he could stop himself, and the rest of his commute was lost in the dissolve of the black cloud over his head.

When Jack finally pulled up in front of his cold, dark apartment, he released the last of his tense energy on a long breath and let his head drop to rest on the steering wheel by his hands. "For cryin' out loud, O'Neill," he muttered. "Get on with your life already."

Yeah. That was gonna happen.

He got inside and unpacked on automatic, thinking over his own words. What _was _life, really?

That kind of philosophical question made him innately uneasy (this was Daniel's territory, really), but he faced it anyway. Besides, the answer came easily to him: it was going off-world and making a difference; it was boring briefings and firefights and dinner in the commissary. It was _team. _

It was absolutely nothing like what he was doing right now.

Just before he drifted off to sleep, he had the distinct feeling that his time here in Washington couldn't really be considered _living _at all.

But politics wait for no man's bad day. So when O'Neill woke up the next morning, he shoved his brooding aside, went to the office, did his job, and tried to pretend for the next week that life in the Pentagon in the nine to five hours was a good place to be.

For a while, it almost worked. ...As long as he didn't think about Colorado, or look at the picture of SG-1 (_his _SG-1) on the corner of his desk, anyway. And he only did that every hour, now. Maybe every half hour. Either way, it was an improvement.

It was something of a surprise, then, to get a call from Mitchell about five days later that went something like this: "Look, sir, I don't think I'm even supposed to even have your number, but I don't know what else to do. I can't get Jackson to talk...or eat. I don't even know if he's left his office. And I'm a little _sick _of getting told that I don't get it. Sam's talking about 'Daniel's way of coping' and stays out of it, and all Teal'c did when Vala asked was give us this number. I don't know what's gotten into the two of them! I didn't even know who I was _calling_ until I got your machine, and if Teal'c has your number then why the heck didn't _he_ call?"

It was a good question, though one Jack suspected he knew the answer to. This kid still had a lot to learn about his teammates.

He tuned back into Mitchell's voice in time to hear,_ "_Seriously, sir. I don't wanna make a big deal outta this, but...this whole Prior thing weirded the place out. Just stop by next time you're in town, alright? I'll owe you one. I don't know what else to do, General. We wanna keep this in the family, so you're my last shot. I..." there was a frustrated sigh that sounded too loud over the machine. "I can't believe I'm saying this to a freakin' voice mail," Mitchell finished to himself. "If you need me, you have my number now." Jack could practically hear the receiver slamming down to end the message. He found that he empathized with the colonel's frustration.

_In the family._ Despite the fact that he'd convinced himself he didn't need to hear the words, they unwound some of the tightness in his chest and made Jack smile, if only for a moment. They needed him. _Daniel _needed him, at least for today.

It was his best friend. All at once, that made his decision easy. Somewhere around the edges of his brain, a couple boxes crumbled into dust.

In an hour, Jack had taken three vacation days, threatened his secretary with mortal injuries if he tried to call, and got tickets on the next flight to Colorado Springs. His phone rang four different times just on the way to the airport. Jack smiled for the first time it what felt like years, as he happily ignored the calls and turned the phone off.

--

Four and a half hours later, Jack closed his eyes, let out a long sigh, and gave a cursory knock on the door to Carter's lab before waltzing in like he still owned the place. His confident gait faded a little when he realized that Vala was in the room, too. Still, he finished his entrance, coasting casually over to the lab table and setting his bag down at his feet. Sam was smiling at him. He couldn't help but return the grin, especially when he saw Vala's gobsmacked expression over Carter's shoulder.

"Ladies," he drawled in greeting.

"Sir," Carter replied with evident relief in her voice. "Thanks for coming."

At this point, Vala got a hold of herself again. She straightened up indignantly, sending them both an accusatory glare that actually made Jack flinch a little. "_What? _How did you know he was coming? You didn't even care enough to call him! Cameron and I had to--" she stopped abruptly as she realized that neither O'Neill or Carter were reacting with any kind of guilt. "...This is a...a _you _thing, isn't it." She made a vague hand gesture that encompassed them and the world at large.

"It is indeed, Vala Mal Doran," came Teal'c voice from the doorway. Jack jumped a little in surprise. _Sheesh._ Used to be a lot harder for someone to sneak up on him. O'Neill reached out a hand to him and the Jaffa stepped into the room and reached to clasp Jack's arm. "It is good to see you, O'Neill. We did not expect you to come so quickly."

O'Neill's lips twitched into a grin. "I flew economy."

Vala's brow creased again. "Alright, what's going on? And someone better explain _right _now, because I care about Daniel too, and it's very unfair to be kept in the dark like this!"

This time both Jack and Sam had the grace to look guilty, and the general thought that he even saw Teal'c's eyes twitch towards the floor for a second. O'Neill glanced at Vala, and then at his two former teammates. "Let me guess," he said without any kind of question in his voice. "Daniel made you promise not to call me."

Teal'c inclined his head. "That is correct, O'Neill."

Vala's eyes suddenly widened in comprehension. Jack had to admit, the woman was quick on her feet. "But Daniel _didn't _tell you that you couldn't give Cameron or I the number if we asked." She smiled widely. "Oh, that's very secretive. Daniel's going to be rather upset about that."

Jack grinned at her despite himself. "Probably."

Her face instantly closed again into an expression of hurt confusion. "But why was this necessary? Can't we handle Daniel on our own? Oh, no offense," she tacked on with a cursory glance at Jack.

"None taken," he answered automatically, despite the fact there kind of was. He figured he probably deserved that. What would he have thought if his team felt the need to call in backup from out of state every time Daniel had a bad day?

Carter reached out to touch Vala's arm. "We really are sorry, Vala. Honestly, Daniel normally doesn't take so long to get over things. He hasn't really talked to Teal'c or I about it either. We thought maybe the general could help."

Vala clearly wasn't convinced. "But that's ridiculous! We've always managed without help before." She turned to look directly at Jack. "You don't trust us with him." It wasn't a question.

To Jack's complete and utter amazement, he realized that she was wrong. "That's not it," he said more evenly than he'd expected, cutting Carter off right before she went to say something. He straightened from leaning on the table and looked Vala squarely in the eye. The words came of their own volition. "Look, things are different now. The _team _is different. I get that." He risked a split second glance at Carter and had to look away again. "I don't like it," he continued frankly, "but I get it." Vala opened her mouth to say something, but O'Neill held up a hand to silence her. "Look, here's the thing. Back when I was here, the team was all there was. We had to take care of ourselves because no one else got it. No one else had done what we had to do every day."

She was watching him with large eyes now, and he knew that Sam and Teal'c were staring at him with the same shock that he felt himself as the words came pouring out of him. He turned a little to include them in his gaze before returning his attention to Vala. "But here's the thing. You guys are handling a whole new brand of bad out here, and it's going to get tough. Probably tougher than we'd ever had to deal with before." He leaned forward again. Vala glanced at Carter over his shoulder, aware that he wasn't just talking to her anymore, but to the whole team. Maybe to the whole freakin' base. "But one thing _has _changed. You're not on your own anymore. I get it. I've been there. I've been there with _Daniel._ And I can help." The momentum drained out of him all at once and he gave a long sigh. He rubbed his forehead with his fingers before looking up at her again with raised eyebrows. "Now, is everyone OK with that?"

"Yes sir," came a voice from behind him. Jack straightened in surprise and turned to see Mitchell leaning in the doorway with a pensive look on his face.

The way he met O'Neill's gaze head-on made the general greet him rather warily. "Mitchell."

"General."

"...How long have you been standing there?"

The colonel's mouth twitched into something almost like a grin. "Long enough to get the gist." He seemed to be scrutinizing Jack's face for something in particular; the older man felt a little like a bug under a microscope. But then Mitchell's expression softened, and some of the tension leaked from his shoulders. "Thank you, sir," he said simply. "We certainly appreciate the support."

All at once, Jack felt very...exposed. He'd said a lot more than he'd intended to, coming here. He cleared his throat awkwardly and shifted from one foot to the other. "...Right," he said at last, when it appeared that no one else was going to break the increasingly uncomfortable silence. "So..." he jerked his head towards the door.

"Yeah," Mitchell agreed easily. He moved over to the table to clear the doorway "Jackson's in his office."

"Yeah," Jack sighed. He got to the door before turning back to the team. The word didn't hurt his brain quite as much any more. "Talk amongst yourselves," he sing-songed, making the appropriate hand gestures. "I'll go drag him out and then we'll hit O'Malley's."

Without waiting for a response, he headed down the corridor.

--

Jack only knocked on Daniel's door because it was locked. Unable to help himself, he beat out the first two measures of "shave and a haircut" on the metal. His "six pence" got abruptly cut off when the door swung open an inch to reveal Daniel's unshaven face.

The one blue eye that Jack could see widened in surprised. "Jack." The archaeologist's voice was equal parts wary, confused, and accusatory. He opened the door all the way and leaned against the frame.

"Daniel," the general answered back with evident glee at one-upping him. "You're looking...human."

The comment seemed to relax the other man almost subconsciously. "I told Sam not to call you," Daniel said with narrowed eyes.

Jack puts his hands in his pockets and rocked back onto his heels. "Yes you did," he agreed with a bright smile.

The younger man stared at him closely for a second. Jack could see the instant when Daniel got it, because his shoulders suddenly drooped and some of the hostility drained from his face. "Mitchell."

"Mitchell," Jack agreed in a similar tone of voice. He wasn't sure what his expression looked like, but it made Daniel grin a little, whatever it was. He cleared his throat. "The kid's persistent. And Vala's..."

"Insane?" Daniel offered with understanding.

"That," O'Neill conceded, "but she's also kind of..."

Daniel sighed. "Yeah. You get used to it. Kind of."

They stood at a silent impasse for a moment. Daniel broke first. "So...you wanna come in?"

"Nope!" Jack was enjoying this far too much. This was the most fun he'd had in weeks. "You're coming out." He winced apologetically at the phrasing, but he reached out to grab Daniel's arm anyway. "You, me, Carter and T have got a date with a round of drinks down at O'Malley's. We can even bring the new kids along."

He could see Daniel's refusal forming in his eyes before it could even be voiced. Jack cut it off by taking a step closer and releasing Daniel's arm. His voice softened and he looked his friend directly in the eye. "Hey," he said quietly. "You're home. You guys did what you had to do, and it worked out. There's nothing else you can do. Time to let it go."

The other man watched him for a long, silent minute. Jack let him. This once, he knew that he was right. "Daniel," he said softly. Everything that needed to be said was in the word.

All at once, Daniel gave in. He let out a long, tired breath and slumped heavily against the doorway. "I don't know if I can," he rasped. That admission said a lot.

"You can." Jack didn't doubt it, even if Daniel did at the moment. He reached out again, but this time his hand rested lightly on Daniel's shoulder. "Come on. Dinner."

"Yeah," his friend agreed with a sigh. He straightened up, stepped out of his office, and closed the door behind him. "Yeah," he repeated with more energy. "I'm starving."

Jack clapped him on the shoulder. "That's my boy!"

Daniel hesitated two steps down the corridor. "Jack?"

The general turned back to look at him. "Yeah?"

"You came."

Jack shrugged the comment off, but Daniel stopped him with a touch to his elbow. "Thank you," he said simply.

Jack looked him in the eye, and he thought about all the things he'd never say. _Of course I did, you idiot. I want to help. I need to be here. I'm not gone, I'm just not here. _

_This is home. _

All he said out loud was, "All you had to do was call. But Daniel..."

The younger man raised his eyebrows, as if he'd heard the rest of it too. "Jack?"

"It's good to see you," the general admitted.

"You too," Daniel said with a smile.

That would do, for now. They had a bit of time; three boxes on the calendar with nothing in them but Daniel's name. It wasn't what Jack wanted, exactly. But yeah, it would do.

Without another word, the best friends went to find their team, go get dinner, and _live_.

* * *

**Author's Note: For those of you that are thinking "This one felt a little different than the others..." right about now, you're right. I am willing to admit that this tag did not come out the way I'd expected it to, and it certainly ended up a bit more Jack-heavy than I'd planned. (Not that I can really complain about that, of course.) But in the end, I think that it touches on the various problems left unaddressed by Jack's few appearances in the later seasons, and I hope that it at least partly fixes the loose ends left over by Shroud. In any case, please tell me what you thought of it; thoughtful comments are always appreciated! Meridian is next. Wish me luck...**

**On another note, I have recently joined a crowd of other fan authors in putting together Stargate: Odyssey, Virtual Season 11. Episodes come out on a monthly basis, and if you're hankering for some good old-fashioned SG-1, this series is for you! The link is available in my profile.  
**


	19. Meridian

**Meridian**

The problem, Jonas Quinn soon discovered, was that he was doing the whole thing backwards. It wasn't his fault, really (except it _was _his fault, at least part of it, and he was never going to be able to work hard enough or save enough people to—), but he couldn't do anything else.

On Kelowna, they had a certain set of ceremonies that were enacted after a death. As far as he could tell, the rituals here on Earth were more or less the same. He found the similarities in burial structures (tombstones of a type were universal, and somehow that absolutely didn't surprise him) particularly fascinating, and he'd spent some time on them during the endless hours of research that made his days now.

Tombstones. Semantics. Research. He'd always done that when he was upset; hid behind the details, the logistics. It was easier to think about tombstones than to think about the reason for them.

Death. Funny, how he used to think about it in such theoretical terms, like it was an interesting intellectual problem. Not so abstract any more.

See, the thing was, when death happened, it was supposed to go in order. You knew the person, and so you grieved over them when they were gone, and then you learned to remember the good things and move on with your life. That was how it had always worked for Jonas, and it was the process he was beginning to undertake with the memories of his fellow friends and scientists that had died from the radiation.

When Daniel Jackson died, things didn't quite work out that way. Jonas found himself in the weirdly untenable position of doing all his grieving first, and only just beginning to _know. _And what memories did he have, really? He'd only known Doctor Jackson for three days, and even a photographic memory only gave him so much to work with. He remembered the other man's good humor, his blazing intelligence, the hard, impenetrable look on his face when he shattered through that window and-

Jonas had no idea, no idea at all, which of the parts of Daniel Jackson that he'd seen were the good ones, and which were the bad or the imagined. How could anyone know that, without understanding the situation? And Jonas couldn't begin to explain it well enough to get those answers from anyone who'd known...who _knew_ Daniel. He remembered it all anyway.

And so all of a sudden Jonas woke up to his second full week at the SGC (_Ten days_, his brain told him at the same time it asked, _Where is this?_) and rubbed the restless, dream-filled sleep from his eyes, and realized that he was going to have to try. If he was going to be _anything _here-any use, any help, any kind of person at all—he had to figure out a way to get over this.

No, not get over it. Get _through it. _

If he was going to spend the rest of his time here under the shadow of Doctor Daniel Jackson, then he needed to know this man that he would never measure up to. To an alien (Literally? Figuratively? Both, he supposed) without any current purpose or goal or mission, the decision was a relief.

So Jonas began his quest to_ know, _in the only way he could think of. He read every mission report on file. And then he asked questions. At first people were hesitant to talk to him, of course. That was to be expected, really—who was he, except the guy that had gotten Doctor Jackson killed?-but eventually people started warming up to him, after they realized that he wanted to listen. This was a ritual unto itself, as time-honored as gravestones and funerals.

Bit by bit, they started to talk: SF's, nurses, majors, scientists, the guys who cleaned the hallways. As they did, Jonas began to see Daniel Jackson the way the SGC had. Everyonewho'd really known him called him Daniel. And they called him other things. Brilliant. Kind. A little spacey. Funny, addicted to caffeine, a workaholic, a dedicated scientist, a decent soldier for someone who started as a geek (that was from the military guys, and he was pretty sure it was a compliment). A pain in the neck, stubborn, willful, hard-headed. A friend. And most of all, very _human, _in a way few other humans were.

Jonas believed it all, and his own memories were rounded out a little, and put into the context of the man.

It seemed like every other sentence, he heard someone else say, "Doctor Jackson's gone", like they were trying to convince themselves. But that wasn't really true. The more time he spent here, with these people, the more convinced he became that Daniel Jackson wasn't gone at all. Jonas saw him every day, now that he knew what to look for.

Daniel was in Major Carter's lab, of course. There were a couple framed pictures of her and the others, placed on tables and counters, more prominent now that Sam picked them up to stare at them so often. The one that got picked up most (not just by her, but by General Hammond and Teal'c too, which made Jonas wonder what exactly they-) was of Major Carter, Colonel O'Neill, and Doctor Jackson sitting close together on the edge of someone's patio. They were all smiling-something that Jonas had never seen in real life, and so found fascinating—and both of the guys had an arm around Sam's shoulders so their hands framed her face in the middle of the picture. They were all tilted a little to the left, as if they'd lost their balance, and the colonel had his other arm flung out to hold their weight long enough for the photo to get taken.

When he was holding that picture, standing quietly with the major while she worked on something, or talked about whatever experiment she was running, or just tried her best to be friendly to him, Jonas felt Doctor Jackson the scientist in the cadence of Sam's speech, in the choreographed places where she paused and waited for him to contribute. He sparkled in the way Sam still managed to smile at things, and the way she stopped herself from sitting at one particular end of the table, near the door. Daniel was especially present in the way she looked at the colonel, like she was waiting for him to either explode or dissolve into the floor at any second. Her grief was sharp and bright, all edges and spaces and picture frames.

With Teal'c it was more subtle, a kind of feeling more than any physical momento. The easiest way to find Daniel around Teal'c was when he settled into _kel'no'reem. _Jonas was at ease there with Teal'c in a way he couldn't be anywhere else. The Jaffa simply accepted him for what he was, no shadows or strings attached. There were whole evenings where Jonas just sat in Teal'c's candle-lit room and read, or even tried to meditate, content with the comfortable silence that Teal'c's calm presence allowed him.

It was during these times that Jonas came to recognize Daniel, the philosopher and intellect, in a particular solemn dip of Teal'c's bald head, and felt the weight of his memories in the way he paused to breathe into the stillness sometimes, like the thoughts were escaping into the air. A sadness, deep and present, like the water giving life to planted roots.

_DanielJackson. _Teal'c always intoned the name without fear. He talked about Daniel often, though never lightly. And whenever he heard the way Teal'c said the name, Jonas recognized it for the honor and memorial it was.

Jonas thought he was beginning to understand, to get a picture of the man who'd died to save his planet. But it wasn't that easy. Because after everyone else, even Sam and Teal'c, after all those stories, there was the colonel.

Colonel O'Neill barely looked at Jonas, never talked to him. Even after he'd been on the base for four weeks, the other man avoided him in hallways and walked out of rooms mid-sentence when Jonas appeared. Jonas thought he understood why—he and Daniel had been close, that much was obvious, and he was the leader of SG-1, responsible and accountable to his own deep sense of team above all else.

That's what he thought, until he realized that _every single story _he'd heard about Daniel Jackson in the past two weeks had also included Jack O'Neill. There were half-recited pieces of conversations, jokes and laughter that seemed so foreign to the hardened military man that prowled the hallways long after everyone else went home. It was unfathomable that anyone would call him by his first name, even though he remembered Doctor Jackson doing it. The colonel everyone else talked about seemed like a different person entirely than the one Jonas met on Kelowna (except that wasn't true, was it, because there'd been two whole days before-)

And here at last, his own memory provided the details that he needed. He remembered their lightning-fast looks passed over and around his head, like he was barely present. He remembered the weird half-finished conversations consisting of a few words that spoke volumes. The odd use of names (_"Jack..." "Daniel?"), _the easy sparring. At the time he'd thought, _These earthlings are strange_, but now he correctly captioned all those little moments with, _I didn't understand what it meant to them. How could I?_

How could he? Until now. Now that he had the collective memories of an entire base. When Daniel was in over his head, O'Neill was the one that watched his back. When O'Neill and Carter nearly died, Daniel was the one that figured it out and got them home. There was SG-1, and then there was Doctor Jackson and the Colonel. When no one else could fix it or talk it out and the world was about to end, you looked at them, and they were looking at each other because in the end that always worked.

Finally, one late night in the briefing room, Jonas was delivered the rest of the answer in the General's quiet, thoughtful drawl.

"Daniel was the one that opened the Gate, you know, and they both went through on the team. But it was more than that. The Jack O'Neill we read about, he got left on Abydos. Something about that mission with Doctor Jackson changed him. We all thought—well, nevermind, there were orders—but as soon as I saw Jack after he'd come back I thought, 'Look at that, he's back from the dead'. And that was Doctor Jackson straight through. They were the sons of this place. I think as much as they saved us, going through that ring together saved them."

And so the next morning, Jonas finally saw it. When it came to Jack O'Neill, the loss of Daniel Jackson was in the things you _didn't _see.

The colonel left a space on his right side when he walked down hallways—there was nothing in it, because it was supposed to be Daniel. He didn't talk much in the mess, didn't crack jokes because their intended audience was gone. He didn't look up from the table or comment in briefings because no one held his gaze quite the same or read his thoughts from a couple words. All of the things that had come with Daniel had gone with him, as if they never existed.

Sam was wrong: the colonel wasn't trying to ignore Daniel's death or pretend it didn't happen. Teal'c and the General were wrong too, in a way: he wasn't waiting for Daniel to pop back in the door, like Ascension was a get out of jail free card.

This wasn't the colonel in control or the veteran in denial, at least not most of the time. This was the friend in mourning. He didn't talk about it because he didn't need to—surely the silence of the things now gone was enough. (The memory of Daniel's white-wrapped form on the bed, dark figure sitting hunched over him with head in hands, already mourning—)

Jonas saw Daniel Jackson in the empty spaces the colonel walked through every day, and in the loneliness of his expressions when he realized for the thousandth time that hour that there was only air where his best friend used to be. It was like searching for tears only to discover you'd been looking for them in a rainstorm. Daniel was most present because _Jack, _for now, was nowhere to be found, and only the colonel seemed to remain.

They'd been friends. They still were, with just one problem—Daniel was dead, and wherever Jack O'Neill turned to look or walk, parts of the world were empty where he expected his best friend to be. A bond like that was something Jonas could only imagine, could only sense in the negatives. It was friendship far beyond the word, into something like family and something like team. It was the strength of SG-1, now diminished by a fourth.

He could determine, now, how much of that Daniel he'd met was the real one. All of him. The thought hit him one Saturday afternoon as the alarm klaxons were ringing and O'Neill ran by him in the hall, Sam and Teal'c close on his heels. The surprise hadn't been that their missing member risked his life to save a planet, a people, a culture, a naïve scientist who liked to read.

The surprise was that this time, out of all the others, Daniel died. And nothing any of them could do, not even his best friend, could bring him back.

_Full circle, _Jonas thought. Knowing, remembering, grieving, dying, living. And someday, maybe, a moving on for all of them, even Jack. Daniel Jackson might be dead, but as long as his team and Jack O'Neill were here, he couldn't ever be gone_. _

_

* * *

_**Author's Note: I'm alive! Shocking, I know-this took much too long to update, and I sincerely apologize. Real life, a novel, and genuine creative struggling with this chapter all got in the way. This is far and away the hardest Best Friends installment I have ever written, and even now I'm not sure it came out as I intended it. A lot of team in here, but I hope enough Jack and Daniel to merit its inclusion in this series. I imagine many of you are surprised that I chose to do this from Jonas' point of view, and with very little actual dialogue with the characters. It's practically impossible to do justice to Daniel**_, _**but I felt the best way to try in a shoddy little fanfiction was to get a sense of him as a whole. Your comments and critiques are absolutely welcome, as always. More of these are coming, but timing is difficult, and I make no promises that I will only break anyway. Thanks for your reading-now go watch a happy episode where Daniel is alive! Cheers!**_  
_


End file.
